My smart 3 year old

Kelsie has been obsessed with learning how to write the letters of her name, learning her address, and learning her phone number among other things. She now knows how to spell her first and last name, she can say our address, and she knows our phone number. She loves to write letters and things all day long. Today after I went to pick up her paper, I found this. I couldn't believe how good it looked. If I didn't know better, I would have thought that Alyssa wrote it for her but it was all Kelsie's doing. Wow, is she smart or what?

Mother's Cookies is going out of business October 2008



For nearly two decades N.M Wheatley (who didn't care for his name of Noah and pronounced his middle name "Mike" although his French mother spelled it "Mique") worked hard as a hometown and foreign newspaper vendor at the corner of San Francisco's Market and Kearny streets. In 1914, he became curious about an elderly couple who passed by his newsstand every day carrying a covered basket filled with delicious home-baked, vanilla cookies they sold door-to-door. After trying one, Mique decided on the spot to purchase the rights to the recipe.

The taste of that vanilla cookie changed his life! Mique decided to invest in something more permanent that a corner cart. San Francisco's 1906 earthquake and subsequent fires influenced Mique to locate his business across the Bay. At a small, one-man plant on 12th Avenue in Oakland he toiled all night baking cookies in a three square foot oven with a nightly capacity of about 2000 cookies or 150 boxes. These sold for $1 a box and his vanilla cookies were an overnight success.

Needing help, Mique hired a young woman to help him, and romance flourished in the small bakery. Mique married his new assistant, Leopoldine, and together they ran the company until their son, Floyd, was old enough to take over. In the early days, cookies were delivered in a wagon pulled by Mique's rented horse, Vanilla. Later, Model-T Fords outdistanced Vanilla. By 1922, the bakery needed more space, and the company moved to East 18th Street - a gamble so large that Mique was forced to sell his house and even the piano to pay for it!

In 1949, the company experienced more growing pains, and the bakers moved one final time to 810 81st Avenue in Oakland, where the headquarters and bakery remain to this day. Thanks to Mique and Floyd, Mother's is a fixture in Oakland and many other towns, employing over 750 people across 14 western states, Alaska, and Hawaii and importing and distributing biscuits from Europe. We salute Mique Wheatley, who went from selling news to making news.

And the rest, as they say, is history!


How sad, no more pink and white animal cookies. I love those things, and so do my kids! What is this world coming to? I did find some animal cookies at Wal-Mart that aren't too bad. I can't remember the brand of them. They almost taste like Styrofoam. They come in a huge bag for like a $2.00 or something. I guess we will stick with those!

Why I love Tennessee!

It is about 79 degrees here today, and the weather has been absolutely perfect! My sister in Utah called me yesterday and said that she had been shoveling the snow on her driveway. I am so not going to miss the snow this year. The first picture is how the kids and I spent our day, outside in our swimming suits! In the meantime, my little niece back in Utah is outside making a snowman. I can't believe it!I love the Tennessee weather especially in the fall.

Today in Tennessee

Yesterday in Utah

I have to brag

I have to brag because I am so happy about this dresser, and also about our baby cribs. So the dresser was given to us by a family in our ward. It was kind of a pale, off-white color when we got it and the knobs on it weren't very cute. I decided that I was going to take it upon myself to completely redo the dresser. Anyone who knows me knows that I am never happy with my so called "projects" and usually end up trashing them because I get so frustrated with how they turn out. This time I decided that I wasn't giving up no matter what. Kelsie and I headed over to our favorite store Home Depot and she picked out her favorite color of pink. The color of paint was called Disney Princess pink. (Kelsie's color of choice trust me.) We came home and immediately set off to paint our new dresser. We paid $8 for the can of paint, and then I ordered the white knobs online for $1.08 a piece. Isn't the dresser so cute? I have to say so myself.

So the cribs that we are using are both hand-me-downs. They were both kind of an oak color but different shades of brown, and I thought that it would be really cute if we could have them both match. I love the way white cribs look, and decided that we should also re-do the cribs. Our bishop's boys painted one of the cribs, and then Kevin and I painted the other one, and again I just love the way they turned out as well. We had some mishaps with finding all of the pieces for the cribs but we did finally figure it out.

Last but not least, my Mom being the sweet lady that she is bought our two sweet girls the cutest crib bedding sets.

I will post pictures later of the completed nursery but for now here is how it is looking.

Alyssa's discovery about the Tooth fairy

It's all my fault, and if my child wasn't snooping through things this never would have happened. So last night Alyssa comes to me and says, "Mom, now I know that there is no such thing as a tooth fairy because I found my first, second, and third tooth in your journal." I was dumbfounded as I heard this coming out of the mouth of my six year old. Okay, yes I know that it probably seems weird to keep your child's first teeth but I didn't know what else to do with them. I decided that I would keep them in envelopes and then place them inside of my journal so I could remember the day she lost her teeth. A journal seemed like a safe enough place to store the teeth but apparently it wasn't. After telling Alyssa that parents can also keep the teeth if they want, I just burst out into laughter and so did she. Her final response was, "I can't wait to go to school and tell all of my friends that there is no such thing as a tooth fairy." WE ARE DOOMED!

It's the final countdown

I want to start singing the song from Rocky. You know the one, "It's the final countdown?" I am 33 weeks along tomorrow and boy am I feeling it. I haven't been able to see my toes now for quite some time, sleeping is pretty much non-existent, backaches are intense, contractions are coming more regularly, and the anxiety is starting to set in about having two new babies in our house. I can't believe that the time is here, and that we are really going to be the parents of twins. We are finishing up the last minute things like getting the nursery ready, the car seats, trying to figure out how we are going to afford a bigger vehicle, putting together the list of who we are going to call when I go into labor, etc. etc.

Kelsie and I have been going through baby clothes. She loves looking at them as much as I do. With two girls already, we really had enough clothes. But of course twins are an exception and I figured that they needed some cute matching outfits of their own. I had to lay out everything on the couch tonight to figure out what they are going to wear home from the hospital. I know it probably sounds pathetic but I am a little excited can you tell?

Time will tell, I guess when these babies will come. Who knows when it will be? We can't wait to see them.

The John Deere fairy has arrived

As we have mentioned before in several of our posts, our lawn is a nightmare to mow. It easily takes over 2 hours to mow our lawn with a push mower. With the humidity on top of that, it just does not make for a fun experience. (I know because I mowed our lawn here once and it wasn't pleasant.) Besides taking forever to mow the lawn, it was just hard for Kevin because he spent almost the entire day on his few days off doing yard work. Well lawn mowing is going to be much easier around here now. The John Deere fairy arrived at our door riding in a Lowe's truck, and delivered this green, mean power machine to our door. Kevin could go on forever to tell you every specification about his new boy toy, but I don't really have a clue when it comes to lawn mowing accessories. Kevin read the John Deere manual from front to back. (I thought that he was studying for his next medical boards or something, it was that intense!) He jumped on his machine, and was back inside within 20 minutes saying the lawn was mowed, both the front and back yard. I was quite impressed actually. Now of course Kevin thinks he needs all the John Deere attachments. They have things like tillers, plows, and spreaders that you can get for it. It was like watching a kid in a candy store with his new possession. I have never seen Kevin so excited.