Just like Curious George

So at least one show we watched today was educational. Rachel made this bridge all on her own today after an episode of curious george showed him making one. I think toothpicks and marshmellows are our new favorite toy.

PS-No christmas pictures yet. We are having technical difficulties getting them off the camera. We took a video of Rachel on Christmas morning that used the remainder of the memory card...and now every time we try to copy it to the computer so we can delete it from the camera we get an error saying it won't copy. ..anyone face this before?

Getting ready for Christmas

Rachel and I spent the day on Friday making sugar cookies. I let her pick though the cookie cutters and choose the christmas ones, and she really wanted to do a heart. I tried to talk her out of using the heart--since it is more valentines than Christmas. She was ready with a speedy response "but mom, Christmas is all about love and hearts are about love." Dang she is good. She also insisted that we make blue frosting, I mentioned once that blue wasn't really a Christmas color but when she didn't agree I gave up and made some blue frosting. She was so giddy and laughing so hard I had to help her hold the tray so she wouldn't drop it. Just a side note, we also made snickerdoodles (since my brother on his mission made a special request) and as fun as it was to decorate the sugar cookies...when faced with a choice for desert she goes for the snickerdoodle every time. I would have put my money on the pink ones with a pile of sprinkles...go figure :-)

Enoying the snow

After living in Boston through some horrible winters, one thing I noticed was that I didn't have very many pictures of the snow...which is funny given how many months out of the year we saw snow. So I decided to go out and take some pictures of the scenery,

I think one of my favorite things about snow is when it settles on the branches of trees, maybe it is because it makes a dead lifeless tree look beautiful. Oh, and I couldn't pass up the chance to include a picture of a hogan...fyi this one is about a half mile from our house.

Culture Lesson

So lately I have seen many of Rachel's friends playing string games. I remember them a little bit from when I was little, cat's cradle, witches broom....okay that's all i remember. Anyway, the missionaries came over for dinner tonight and one of the Elders was showing Rach all kinds of cool tricks with string, a rug, two arrowheads, yada yada yada. So I asked him if it was a Navajo originated game. He said that he has heard stories that it is a winter game, and something to do with Spider Woman. So in an attempt to feel like I had a cultural lesson today--i did a little research (aka I googled it) and here is what I found.

In the Navajo tradition, the string games are only to be conducted in the winter and were given to the people by Spider Woman to help them keep their thinking in order, which would then help them to keep their lives in order.
They played string games in the winter only because winter is when spiders hibernate. It was believed that if anyone played string games outside of the winter season they would either be struck by lightening, fall off a horse or be urinated upon by spiders. There are about 75 figures that can be made, stars, birds, rockets, arrows, etc.

Rachel and I spent the evening trying to follow youtube string game videos. After about an hour-I finally figured out how to do jacob's ladder--yahoo!

Snow!

We were so excited to see snow on the ground when we got back to Chinle on sunday night. Here is Rachel winding up to throw snowballs at me, as you can see there is barely enough to even make a snowball-but she doesn't care.

We work up to more snow today so I decided to be a fun mom and made time for another snowball fight before rushing off to school.

Here are two girls who are psyched to be going home early --due to ALL THE SNOW they called school early...and they canceled school for tomorrow. I invited her friend to come home with us since I have a lot of catching up with work stuff to do and didn't have entertaining Rachel on my agenda, I am sure her mom thought I was doing her a favor...but turns out it was a win-win situation! :-)
In case anyone else is laughing that they canceled school-I too tried to do some investigating. I kept asking "So, is it snowing harder somewhere else...because this doesn't seem too bad?" Apparently, it sounds like all the dirt roads turn to mud roads, which doesn't work well with cars let alone school buses.

Sad news

Sam's sister Susan passed away on Friday night. I am grateful that we had to opportunity to be in town for the past few days and had some very spiritual experiences talking with her. Throughout this hard time I am relying on her strength that she held onto until the end. Just the day before, she worked with her husband to write one final post on her blog. It took her all day to dictate it to him, as she would say a few words and then wait and rest a while and pick it up again later. Being hard to speak, each word that she chose spoke sentences. Not very many people have the opportunity to write such a thing, and we all treasure it. I was going to pull a few of my favorite parts to share...but I can't narrow it down. If you want, you can read it all on her blog http://lemonademakers.blogspot.com/. She definitely set the bar high and we will miss her.



I will forever remember her strength and her caring attitude throughout all of this. Despite what she experienced she found a way to hold strong to her faith in Jesus Christ, to be optimistic, and somehow even gave comfort to all of us. I know-it should have been the other way around, but in the past few weeks when she knew that we were all distraught with the realization of where things were leading, we could tell she was making a conscious effort to make us laugh. Hard to believe I know, but she mustered up funny faces to make at Rachel and had many one liners where she mocked her visitors in attempt to lighten the mood. All of us were focusing on her pain and how hard things were for her...and she was thinking of us.

When I start getting upset about how things turned out and wondering "Why?" I always remember something she wrote just after being diagnosed:
"Tonight as Justin and I were eating dinner, it was the first chance we've really had to sit and talk about our feelings and what we are going to do. Naturally the conversation turned to "Why?"After about 30 seconds we decided it was a pointless conversation to continue.My answer is that it doesn't really matter, and I'll drive myself crazy in the meantime trying to figure it out.Yes, I don't meet any of the known risk factors, and I'm only 25, but for whatever reason this is mine to own now.It may sound crazy to say this, but I really do feel blessed by so many of the events over the last few months, and I know that Justin and I and our families will continue to be blessed through whatever course this takes us." (written just after she was diagnosed in July 2008).



She decided not to dwell on the why?...and so I will try to do the same.

I know you are all wondering how we are doing. Right now we are focusing our energy on being happy that she is no longer in pain and we are enjoying reminiscing together. We also find joy thinking of her, being greeted by family in the Spirit World and being able to hear the sought after answers to some of life's biggest questions.

Susan mentioned that she wanted to set up a foundation to help others dealing with colon cancer so we are working on that and are grateful that we will have something to work on that keeps her legacy alive and also be able to turn and do service for others in similar circumstances.

Thanks for all of your prayers I know you have been thinking of us and we appreciate it.

This whole cancer thing is out of control

As you know we are dealing with our own bouts with cancer and how much it sucks. A friend of mine recently told me that her niece's 7 month little girl was just diagnosed with a late stage of neuroblastoma. They feel it is treatable and have high hopes, so that is a good thing. I was looking at her family's blog and I was amazed at what they are experiencing...but most of all I love all of the photos with this little girl cheesing it for the camera all in the midst of chemo. Here is another family to keep in your prayers. http://www.famofcookies.blogspot.com/