The time has come...

Well, I have been thinking for a long time about making my blog private, but it just seemed too hard. I think the time has come to start figuring it out. I want to invite everyone I know, so please send me your e-mail address if I don't have it already. You can send it to me at lovelesscafe@gmail.com. This has been a fun project for me to record our lives, and sharing it makes it even more fun, so please don't hesitate to send me an e-mail.

*I went private for about a month, then realized that my mother-in-law was having a hard time viewing the blog, so I decided to go public again with just a little less advertisement.

A monkey?

Lately, after prayers, Maddie has been saying, "amen...not a monkey!" I laughed (and I shouldn't have) when I realized that she was telling us that we are supposed to say "a men" after prayers, and we are not supposed to say "a monkey". How did she come up with this idea?

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day John, you have made our lives so fun, thanks for being such a great dad and husband.



Recently John introduced our kids to one of his favorite singing groups, They Might Be Giants. They are a pretty eccentric group of men. Most of them have children, so they have started writing some children's songs. The dad puppet in this video reminds me so much of John that it makes me laugh. He is such a great dad to Johnny, his little "number 2", as well as our girls.

A new home for the Loveless Cafe

I love seeing pictures of the inside of people's homes. I shouldn't admit that because it shows just how nosy I can be. I love to see how different homes are set up, and it gives me some great decorating ideas. Since we moved in I have realized just how inadequate my decorating abilities are, and I need lots of help--any ideas? This is the view from our bedroom doorway, four bedrooms and a kids bathroom that John and I don't have to use, YAY.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, this house has a lot of arches. I counted them today as I was taking pictures. Here is one leading to the master bath.

Another in the master bedroom. (the quality of these pictures isn't that great, sorry.)

Then 5 more that you can see in this picture with one just above the view of the camera. All together that makes eight. The people who built this house really liked arches, and I am beginning to like them too.

Here is a better view of the entry way.

The two doors behind the big arch are the laundry room, leading out to the garage, and a half bath. In the next few years we want to move the T.V. downstairs. It wasn't the center of attention in our last house so we weren't in any hurry to make in look nice. It will probably be a while before it looks nice here, even though it is the center of attention now.

Here is the beautiful view though the back windows, it will be even prettier once we have a yard. You can see our ward building in the middle. Unfortunately, our neighbors all have a beautiful view of us right now too, because we don't have window coverings for these windows yet.

I have a love/hate relationship with the kitchen and dining room. I love the kitchen, but don't quite love the dining room yet. There is no real place for a table, so our temporary solution is to just have the table straddle the carpet and the tile. We are not quite sure what to do with this room, and have thrown around the idea of trying to find more tile that matches or tearing out the carpet and some tile and laying a wood floor. This is where we need ideas. We haven't come to a conclusion about what to do with the couch. It is such a big room that we will probably just leave it here for now, but I am thinking it will probably be a basement couch once we finish a T.V. room down there. In the mean time it is a great place to sit and read to the kids after breakfast. We are in the process of having a computer hutch made for the nook, that should make it flow a little better. Someday, after our kids grow a little more, we will probably do away with our diner furniture, so just imagine it with a beautiful, elegant table and bar stools.

Over all, we feel so grateful to be in this home and feel like it will be a great place to raise our children. It will be fun to see how things evolve in the next few years.

Maddie is 3 years old!

Maddie turned 3 years old the day after we moved into our home. Of course we weren't up to celebrating it, so we just didn't tell her ;) We decided to celebrate it last Sunday after church instead. We kept it very simple and sweet, but she didn't seem to mind, and I have vowed that I will make it up to her next year. We stocked her up on some new, clean and unstained shirts for her birthday, because with Maddie an unstained shirt is rare. We sure love that Madeline.

I'm not as computer illiterate as I thought :)

I figured it out, I had to do a bit of creative thinking, but I finally figured out how to get our pictures onto our Internet compatible computer. I don't know if you would consider burning the pictures to a disk creative thinking, but for me it was. I am happy that I can now share what we have been doing the past two weeks with pictures, because, after all, a picture is worth a thousand words. Here is a picture of some of my very dear friends, I will miss experiencing all the in's and out's of everyday life with them--but am glad that we are still close enough that I can visit often.

They were very sweet and held a moving away party, I felt so loved, thank you!






Hannah got a little teary eyed while saying good-by to her friends, it was so heartbreaking to watch. As you can see, Johnny wasn't quite as sentimental in that area.

This is the cat that we left behind. He wasn't our cat, but during the last two days that we were packing, we were in and out of our house so much that the door was constantly open. He came in and made himself at home. He was a very nice cat, and our kids were sad to leave him behind, they got so attached to him that they even named him--Dumpling. Sorry kids, one cat is enough, and I am pretty sure he had an owner already.

On Friday the 5th John left early in the morning with a loaded moving van with one of our nephews. At the new house, he met up with 3 more of our nephews my mom and one of our nieces. They unloaded one truck and headed back to Kearns for the second load. Thankfully they brought my mom and niece, Hailey, to Kearns also. They were such a big help with the cleaning jobs that I thought would be so easy, but turned out to be more than I bargained for. Luckily, Vera let Maddie spend the night at her house, so it was just me and Lucy while Hannah and Johnny were at school. Hailey was more than happy to entertain Lucy while mom and I cleaned the fridge, mopped the floor, and finished up the bathrooms--things you can't really do while the house is occupied. When it came time to pick Hannah and Johnny up from school, we were nearly done. I will never forget loading all of the cleaning supplies into our van and telling them it was time to say goodbye. It was so sweet to hear them run through the house one last time and yell, "goodbye kitchen....goodbye, bedroom....goodbye, garage." Strangely enough, no tears were shed. We were so tired that I didn't even think of getting one last picture of us in front of the house, plus it would have had to be without John and Madeline, and that just didn't seem right.

We made it

We have officially moved into our new (to us) home, and we are so happy to be here. We haven't had Internet until yesterday and we have been here since the 5th , so we have had plenty of time to do things besides sit at the computer. We have spent that time cleaning, unpacking, meeting the neighbors, and cleaning some more. I have a feeling that the cleaning will never stop. We are in love with our neighborhood. There are so many young families, and friends for our kids. We feel a little bit out of our element, though, I guess you could call it culture shock. John and I were just talking this morning about our lives and how everything happens at just the right time whether we know it or not. It is only in hindsight that we are able to see how much we have learned in each place we have lived. I am so thankful for the experiences that we have had in each place and excited, and just a tiny bit nervous, to see what there is for us to learn here. I want to show pictures so badly, but our computers are being funny right now. The only computer that has the Internet doesn't have a working picture card drive. John has some business trips coming up so he won't be able to fix it for a little while. In the mean time, I will have to do really well at just describing things.

What have I done!?

I showed John this recent purchase of mine, and the first word out of his mouth was "Blasphemy!" I agree, I can't believe I broke my bread making streak of almost 6 years yesterday. Call me crazy, but I just didn't feel like making bread while we were trying to pack things up. I made sure to get my favorite kind of bread though, Grandma Sycamore's. It did make me feel better when Hannah told me that store bought bread was gross, thanks Hannah :)

Talents

Near the end of our rush to get Hannah to school on time this morning, I piled everybody into our van and we were on our way. Today we had a conversation that I thought was worth writing down, and please forgive me if I get carried away and start bragging...but that is what mom's do, right? I think my kids are smart, of course, because I am their mom. Though, I do have to admit that I have never met a child who is not impressive , talented, smart and amazing in one way or another.

This is what I learned from my kids today:

Hannah: Mom, how much does Lucy weigh?
Me: about 20 pounds, I think.
Hannah: Oh, that's why she is so easy to lift.
Johnny (after a pause): If she weighed 3 times that much she would be 60 pounds just like Shelby (Hannah's friend.)
Hannah (in awe): Johnny! You know how to do times!? You are smarter than me!
Johnny: no, I just added 2+2+2 and that equals 6....
Hannah: That's times!!!

It was so funny to see Hannah humbled by her little Kindergarten brother, but I really didn't want her to think that Johnny was "smarter" than her. Hannah has always had a talent for words and reading, and was reading some pretty complex words by the time she was four. She has always felt she has an advantage over her little brother who has struggled with reading. This year Hannah's class has focused more on math, and she has struggled more than she is used to. It was at this point in the conversation where I started my mom lecture. I found myself repeating the exact same words that I had heard from my primary and young women leaders. I mentioned how interesting it is that everybody seems to have talents for different things, and maybe we can all help each other. "Johnny can help Hannah with math and Hannah can help Johnny with reading." I remember, as a young woman, thinking that my leaders were just trying to make me feel better with lessons like this. Now, after seeing it with my own children, both who I love very much, I really believe it! We each do have talents and we can learn from each other.

Okay, I'm done.

Here are a few talents that we have been working on at our home.

(I am not sure if I will ever have the patience for this again, so I decided that I had better take a picture. Hair has never been my strong point, so I am trying to learn from a few people who do it for fun.)

Our dam lesson

Yesterday, Vera came over to visit. Our kids were so excited, they love when Aunt Vera comes over because she always brings fun activities with her. Well she didn't let them down this time. She brought a little canal which she made out of styrofoam and some colored water. She showed the kids how the water stops progressing when there is something in the way like a dam. She made some little dams out of styrofoam and each of the kids were able to take a dam out so that the water could continue on down the canal. You can tell that she has had many years of experience in being a primary teacher because our kids listened amazingly well. She told them of how we can remove the dams in our lives by repenting and being good. Then she showed them how we can progress to be a celestial person and family when all of the dams are gone. Thanks for the fun activity and bonus lesson Vera! Our kids always listen better when it comes out of your mouth.