Life Lessons, a Lemonade Stand, and a Scooter

When we moved here to Utah, aside from silly bandz, there was one thing that it seemed like every kid here owned...a Razor Scooter. Mary and Sam didn't seem to care or notice, and that was fine with me. They have their bikes, and they still love to ride them ALL THE TIME. Pretty soon though, Mary started asking kids in the circle if she could ride their scooter. She immediately fell in love, and started asking for one of her own.

I decided that this would be the perfect opportunity to teach some of life's important lessons. Earning, saving, tithing, and patience.

I told Mary that if she could pay for 1/2 of the scooter, we would pay for the rest. At first, we decided that should could have a quarter every time she helped me out by feeding William his bottle. It is hilarious to watch this, because he is almost 1/2 her size. He adores Mary, and most of the feeding time is spent with her making him laugh and smile, which ends up with him covered in formula, but happy.

At first I was just handing her a quarter each time she fed him, but we were quickly running out of quarters, so I told her we would make a chart, and she could keep track of the quarters she was earning on the chart. One mark for each quarter. One circle for a dollar.

This money earning process was taking quite a while, so she asked if she could do anything else. Mom's LOVE this question. She ended up doing some pretty big jobs in order to earn more quarters. She pulled weeds, cleaned up the entire toy room (which is a big project some days), she swept the kitchen floor, and so on.

This last Saturday she asked if she could do a lemonade stand in order to try to make the rest of the money for the scooter. So, I told her she could do it, if she completely took charge of it. With Mary, this was not a problem. We have a running joke in our family and in the extended family about Mary someday being the CEO of Coke. She is a go-getter, and she knows how to get things done, and get them done correctly and efficiently.

The lemonade stand only proved this to be even more true. Mary got it all set up, and a few minutes later, I went outside.

She had everything organized on the table in a way that would get the lemonade to the customer the most efficiently. And yes, that is exactly how she described it to me. The stand was complete with a towel for the little kids that spilled on themselves, a garbage can, and two different flavors.

Then, she got down and dirty and started delegating. In less than 10 minutes she had her friends knocking doors in order to get customers! I was a little embarrassed by this, but I was determined to let Mary do this all on her own. She even tried to set up a drive through service.

It was hilarious. At one point, when I went out to check out the progress, I think I heard her ask for a tip. eek! Good thing that customer had a great sense of humor and a big heart.

In just an hour, Mary had earned almost $8.00 in quarters! Ben and I could not believe it when she came walking in the door with a huge grin plastered on her face and a cup overflowing with quarters. It was all we could do to not roll on the floor and laugh until we cried. It was just so Mary, and so funny.

Needless to say, Sam rode his bike, I walked, and Mary rode by us on her brand new, shiny, pink scooter (complete with a bell and streamers) all the way to school today. (Ben was with William at home) There was not one tear shed when she had to leave me. She was all grins and proudly walked into that school with her scooter by her side. Few!

We talked to Mary about tithing, and gave her the choice about paying it. She decided that it is something she wants to do, and she has the money in an envelope in her church bag, waiting until we go to church next.

I am so proud of Mary and for her willingness to be taught such precious and important life lessons. I can only hope that this will continue and that I can clue in on the moments that will be right to teach these lessons. I sure love my little girl.

The Boy's Room...check

It is finished! This room was easier than Mary's, but a lot more time consuming. It was really fun to do though! My original plan was to have it similar to Mary's, with the stripe on top and one through the middle, but I couldn't decide which color to use for what. So, I decided to use all of the colors, and I LOVE it!
The room is a rustic, old-fashion, things on wheels, type of room. It came together really well. I still have some touch up to do, but so far, it is great.
The best thing about it, is that this room will get to be the guest room, until we can complete the real guest room downstairs. It is fun to know that our guests will have such a fun room to stay in. Sam loves it, and is constantly asking me to play with the airplanes. yikes!I guess it is officially Sam's room, since William is still in with us, but sooner than later, we will get both boys in there, and they can dream boy dreams and talk boy talk together.


The Colors of the Walls




Some Decor







These airplanes will be hanging from the celing by the end of today. Fun huh!

I can't Believe It

Sam is in pre-school! His first day was this week. He LOVED being the one to go to school. I was so relieved. I was really worried that he would be afraid, after watching Mary be so reluctant to go to her school. But instead, he kept saying that he was a big boy and he was so excited! He marched right up the steps and into the house with no problem at all. After school, he came running out to me with a huge grin. It was adorable!

It is a pre-school co-op with six other women in our ward. It should be really fun, we have a lot of cool things planned.
This will be such a great thing for Sam. He is so excited to finally be the one doing something. It is about time. He also gets to play soccer this spring! He already talks about it all the time. He is growing up so fast, it is nuts. I sure love my little Sammy Boy. And I am so excited for all of the adventures that lie ahead for him.

Sam has also made a best friend here in Herriman. It is his first really good buddy. His name is Landon and he is the most adorable and sweet kid! We all love him. He lives right next door. Perfect. It is so cute to see Sam and Landon playing all day long. They beg to be with each other, and they miss each other when they are apart. The other day Landon had to go to the store with his mom, and Sam was bawling because he "missed Landon so much." ha!

This move has been a very good thing for Sam in several ways. It has been an unforeseen but very welcome blessing.

Mary's Room...Check

As of this morning...Mary's room is complete! I had to do a little bit of touch up under the black stripe (the tape was not leak proof), but that was it, and now it is finished!

The picture didn't get the color very well, but the top 1/2 is light pink and the bottom 1/2 is dark pink. Oh, and her bed spread is black with white polka dots. The stripes on it are from the sun coming through her window.
This room does not come without a story. In fact, her room could have been complete, start to finish, in under three hours. Yup, thats right. But instead, it took almost a week.


The famous diva corner. This is where all of the accessories, purses, bags and make-up reside. The very last thing we have left to do in her room, aside from a rug, is a new lamp. I am on the lookout for a really cool pink lamp with black on it. I think Hobby Lobby has the winner.


Last Saturday I got the two different colors of pink done, and the black stripe in the middle of the room, in about 2 hours total. That black stripe took longer than both colors of pink did. It was tough! All we had left was the black border up by the ceiling. No prob. While Ben was measuring and marking where the tape needed to go, and I was following him with the tape, we looked down and saw the entire can of black paint spilled in a puddle on the carpet! The entire house has new carpet in it. It was put in right before we moved in. The house still smells of new carpet. We love it.
Ben and I both sat and stared in horror and then we went to work trying everything we could think of. We got a dry towel and soaked up all of the excess paint. Then we got out the paint thinner and started scrubbing. While we were scrubbing, our neighbor came over and offered her carpet cleaning vacuum. We brought that up, and it lessened the black color, but it spread the paint. We worked and worked and worked, and this is what we are left with.

The stain is much darker in person. The flash on my phone lightened it up a lot. (we are still using our phone cameras, because the computer that our camera hooks up to isn't working yet)
It really stinks. I am now hunting for a cute pink rug to cover this until we re-carpet it sometime. Probably when we carpet the guest room downstairs.
I had my surgery soon after the paint spill and then I have had to wait until I am well enough to finish the black border. So, it took almost a week to complete the room. I am still very sore from the surgery, but I was able to do a few minutes of touch up work this morning.
I can't believe that we have painted three other rooms without any spills, but when we get to the one room where we use black paint, we spill the entire can!

Oh well, what's done is done. A rug will look cute there, and no one will have to see it, but it sure bites to have a stain like that on new carpet. Ouch.

Aside from the stain, I love how her room turned out! It is adorable. Mary loves it too. She keeps thanking me over and over again. It matches her "diva in paris" theme perfectly. I even go in her room, just to be in there. It is a very fun room and it matches Mary's personality perfectly. Girly but sporty and spunky. Love it!

We also got all of the fall decor up this weekend! I had to do it all in slow motion, because of some pain, and it took me a lot of the day to do it, but it is done. Ben helped a lot as well. Fall is my absolute most favorite season, and my fall decorations are my favorite as well. I wanted to get everything up this weekend, because it makes me feel so happy and excited. It was the perfect post-surgery remedy. It makes the home look so warm and cozy and festive. Hooray for fall!

Next up, the boy's room. Buckle your seatbelts, this is bound to be a trip.

Procedure turned Surgery

I drug myself out of bed yesterday morning at 6:00am and headed off to the hospital for my surgery. We had a hard time finding a babysitter for the kids, so we decided that I would go to the hospital by myself, and Ben would be there when I woke up from surgery. That way the kids would only need to be at the babysitters house for about 2 hours.

For some weird reason, I really wasn't that nervous. I was the most nervous for the I.V. I HATE those things. It wasn't too bad this time though. I talked with the doctor, talked with the sandman (the anaesthesiologist) and then they wheeled me into the freezing cold surgery room.

The last thing I remember was the sandman saying that he needed to make sure my I.V. was working. Next thing I knew, I was waking up with Ben by my side. As with the last D&C I had, I was shaking all over. I just do that I guess. It makes my body ache all over, but this time they gave me some stuff to stop the shakes. Hooray.

Then I realized that my tummy hurt, in fact, I felt like I had been stabbed. I looked at Ben and he said, "um, they had to do a little more than just the D&C."
Come to find out, I had a hole in my uterus. I am waiting for the doctor to call me today to find out how that hole got there. I don't know if he made it during the D&C, or if it was already there before hand, or if it occurred when I gave birth to our big baby William... who knows, but they ended up doing laparoscopic surgery to fix it. Laparoscopic surgery is where they insert three things into your stomach and perform surgery like playing a video game. They look at a screen and maneuver their three things around in there. For me, they burned the hole shut, or that is what I think I heard they did anyway. I will never understand why doctors explain everything to you when you just wake up from surgery. Seriously. They did show me pictures of the hole though, and it was pretty big, and really disgusting.

I now have three holes in my stomach. One of them is right in the middle of my belly button. It has stitches in it. The other two are taped shut and I can't tell if they are also stitched or not. There is too much stuff around them. It grosses me out to look at them right now, so I will wait and see if they are stitched when I am not so sore and when they don't look so nasty.

Ben had a surgery done the same way last year, so here is a picture of his tummy after the surgery. Believe me, you don't want to see a picture of my tummy right now, it is still pretty raw looking from the surgery. It does look thinner though. I think that thick lining actually made my tummy bigger. Weird. But basically, my tummy looks the same as Ben's in this picture. Stab wounds, bruises, and everything in between.

I don't have that giant white patch of gauze though. Ben had a tube coming out of his stomach, luckily, I didn't. His surgery was worse, way worse.

My stomach is very, very sore, and I can't stand up straight yet, but I have some great pain meds, so I have been sleeping a ton. I will have a two week recovery instead of the two day recovery that the D&C was supposed to be. Boo.

The doctor also found that the lining of my uterus was extremely thick. I thought I heard the nurse say it was like being three months pregnant. I could be wrong though, I was still in a fog when she was talking. With the D&C, he pretty much scraped it all out.The doc is pretty sure this was the cause of the bleeding. For some reason, he thinks my body was having a mis-fire of estrogen and progesterone which signals the lining of the uterus to shed. I am still very confused. I will be grateful when the doc. calls so it can all make more sense.

I am relived that the surgery is over though, and I am glad I didn't know what was really going to happen until after the fact. I am hoping I can recover quickly, the problem will be fixed, and I can get back to life quickly. I have some painting and fall decorating to do. ;) I LOVE FALL!

Speaking of painting..I finished painting Mary's room last week and it is ADORABLE!!! I just have some touch up left to do. Pictures coming soon. And, oh boy, do I have a story to go along with this paint job. But, I need to heal up for a while first. Stay tuned...

Just for the Girls

First of all, I just went through my dashboard stuff, and I have WAY too many blog posts to catch up on. I am trying though. I have been reading all of your posts this morning, but I haven't been able to comment. I may come back and comment later. If time allows. Just know that I am still following all of you and I will try to comment soon.

Second of all, if you are male, or just don't like reading about "girl stuff," you better stop now. The rest of you, continue on.

As mentioned in earlier posts, I have been having some issues since William was born. Basically, to be blunt, I haven't stopped bleeding since he was born 3 1/2 months ago. And no, it isn't just some light spotting here and there. Not even close. My iron is too far down and it makes me feel like a slug. The doctor has had me try everything. We were even doubling up on birth control pills for a while there. That was sure interesting. I would look at anything or talk about anything and start crying. It was pathetic.

Nothing is helping. I had an ultrasound, where everything looked normal. Obviously, everything isn't normal, so on Thursday, this week, I go in for a D&C and also a hysteroscopy, where they check everything out with a camera to try to locate the problem. Fun times for me. The doctor is hoping that the D&C will re-set my body clock, so to speak.

I am not ovulating for some reason, and if we want to have any more children (which is undecided at this point, but I would like to choose for myself, not have my body choose for me) we have to get this fixed.

I am not looking forward to this at all, especially with all of the stuff that happened last time I had a D&C, but I am hoping the doctor can figure out what the heck is wrong with me.

Well, looks like computer time is up, William is hungry. Dang, he is so cute! Wish me luck on Thursday. Later.

Just Another...

...update post.

For some reason, I just can't find any time to take pictures, sit at the computer, or blog. A lot is happening, but it is happening too fast. I can't seem to record it all very well.
So, here goes another update blog with little blurps and no pictures of what is happenin' with the Maynards.

We pulled Mary out of gymnastics. It was a HARD decision, because she has some serious and unique talent with it. She was going too far too fast, and it was beginning to take over our lives. (and she is only 5) She was put in the TOPS program here, where the training is three hours long twice a week, with a third day that was optional but basically required. It is ALL strength, flexibility and conditioning. It is a specialized class that prepares girls to move up fast and to be ready to compete at young ages. There were only three girls in the class. Mary was going to start competing next month. (two years younger than any of the other kids competing in her level)
The $$ was OUTRAGEOUS and the time and commitment were crazy. It was compromising a lot of family values and goals that we have set in our home. And it was only going to get more demanding and more expensive from here. So, with a lot of guilt and worry about ruining an amazing gift our girl was given, we choose best over better and called it quits. Sometimes the big picture and the eternal perspective for the group, as a whole, isn't always what we want, but it is the right choice.

On a happier note, Mary is still taking a little tumbling class that is only one hour twice a week, and is very low key. She also gets to do ballet and jazz classes. She is so excited to dance! She got her ballet shoes and outfit today and she put it on right when we got in the door. We also just ordered her jazz shoes. She has been dancing all over the house. I haven't seen her this excited for a while now, and I love it.

I begin teaching piano lessons today. There was a demand here and I jumped on it. The idea of some extra $$ for home decor and some family trips sounds good to me. I just got the piano tuned, and I have all of the sticker charts and treat buckets ready to go. It will be a lot of fun.

4 days into running, I trashed my knee. It was so bad, I had to get off the treadmill and come home. I didn't fall, twist, snap or bend my knee in any weird way. It just started hurting during a run, and it got worse from there. I stopped working out, but that didn't help at all. The pain progressed for the next two weeks until I was literally on crutches and crawling up the stairs. So, I broke down and went to an orthopedic specialist. They did some x-rays and saw some big inflammation going on. Basically it had something to do with my hips being out of wack from having such a large baby, and therefore the muscles in my legs are off, and somehow it trickled down to where the muscle connects to the tibia. I don't really know, the doctor talked too fast. Basically, the muscle was beginning to tear away from the bone, and therefore, I hurt..a lot. The only way to correct this was for me to walk normal and to be able to exercise. Limping and not exercising those muscles was making it worse. Can't exercise with pain, so they gave me a cortizone shot to numb the pain for a few months, so I can strengthen the muscles and walk without a limp. Hopefully, but the time the shot wears off, everything will be back to normal again.
The shot KILLED!!!! It felt just like an epidural, only it went right into the bursea (spelling?) sack in my knee. I am the silent type when in pain. I hold my breath. This hurt so badly, that I literally hollered and banged my hand on the table. The needle was in there forever. He literall tapped my bone with the needle in order to find the most painful spot. I thought it would never end. In reality, I bet it was only 20 seconds, but still.
That was over a week ago, and the shot is just starting to kick in. I have been able to run the past few days, and I am in heaven! Hooray.

We went to Boise for Labor Day and had a blast with Ben's family. All of his brothers and their families were there, except for one. We had a great time, and it was nice not to drive so far to get there.

The fact that we moved finally hit me last week, and it was a HARD week. I cried every day because I missed the comfort of Colorado Springs so much. I missed our home, our friends, our ward, the town, our neighborhood, ect. I just missed the feeling of being home and settled. Colorado was my home. It still is, in my heart. We are happy here, but the feeling of being new and a little lost gets old fast. Time will make it better. We will soon make this house our home and we will continue to make friends and memories here. I just had to deal with the emotions of the move at one point or another, and last week was that time for me. Up until then, I didn't have time or emotion to invest in that. I am better now. I still miss Colorado so much, but I am looking ahead now and trying to plant some seeds here. There are so many wonderful things here and so many great people. We have been having a great time, truly. I couln't have asked for a better place to move to. I just had to deal for a while. We will be just fine.

William is cutting two more teeth! He cut the bottom middle teeth, and now he is getting the set next to those.
He turned three months old this month. I can't belive it! He is HUGE. He is so big, that people look at him and crack up. Everyone ends up coming over to him and they play with him for a while. He is VERY quick to smile, and he will smile at anyone, so that makes him all the more addicting. He is laughing a lot as well. We call him "Sunshine Bear." Sunshine, because you can't help but feel happy when you see him and his enormous smile, and Bear, because he looks like a cute chubby gummybear. I am sure he would hate the nickname, seriously, how un-masculine can you get. oh well. He has been such a blessing for us with all of the change taking place. He has been our little light that is always there. He is just our fat, happy baby and we can't seem to get enough of him.

Sam got a big boy bike and he is in heaven. He has some good friends here and they romp around the cul-de-sac on bikes, powerwheels, scooters, ect. from sun up to sun down. Sam is actually tan! I didn't think that was possible with his ultra white skin, but he is actually tan. He is very happy here, and it is so fun to see his personality blossom so much. This move was a wonderful thing for Sam. I am in a pre-school co-op with some ladies in the ward, and I am sure Sam will love it. That begins next week.

Mary is off track, so she is out with the rest of the neighborhood from sun up to sun down. The toys have been right on the shelf where I put them when we moved in. They remain untouched. I am tempted to wrap them up and give them to the kids for Christmas. The kids are constantly playing outside. It is awesome. Mary is slowly getting better with her seperation anxiety, but we have a long way to go.

Ben is going to crack if it doesn't snow soon. He stares out at those huge, majestic mountains all day and just drools. I have never seen him have ski fever this badly, and I have seen it get pretty bad. It cracks me up. It will be a great winter with Mary and Sam and Ben all able to ski together. I am hoping to take a few runs myself.

Ben and I are speaking Sunday. That's all I have to say about that.


Well, thats about it folks. Hopefully things will calm down a little so I can do shorter posts with less words and more pictures. Hang in there with me.

I am off to activity days. We are doing a Food Bank scavenger hunt. It should be pretty fun!