Zufelt Family Feb 2015

Zufelt Family Feb 2015

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Skype Gems Tonight

Skype gems tonight with Ben.

Brian was trying to explain Ramadan.
"The people wake up before the sun comes up and eat breakfast then they fast all day long and eat again after the sun goes down at night."
"So they become nocturnal?"

Ben was talking about getting rained out of something here in Singapore. Brian said he didn't know what rain was anymore.
"Rain is like a sink. The sky is the faucet. The ground is the drain."

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Gorgeous Singapore Morning

Saturday morning I had to run out at 6:30 am to buy drinks for Ben's birthday party and get them chilling. I drove down the street to the Fair Price and this is what I saw out my back window on the drive home. It was so stunning I stopped the car and got out and took a picture. I will miss this stunning, humid, green, alive beauty here. I haven't taken enough times to enjoy sunrise or sunset in this country but I have absolutely revelled in the rain storms, the lightening, the amazing flowers that are everywhere, the beautiful trees and bushes that look like fake ones you'd buy in Wal-Mart but that are actually real live jungle plants. I love the type of tree pictured here best of all. They have such a stunning beauty, particularly when they are alone and isolated as if they had been put on display on purpose amidst the lingering morning fog across the field of wild grass. Singapore is beautiful.

Monday, April 28, 2014

Star Wars Cake

 

 
 
Here is my latest and greatest cake. I trolled the internet for inspiration and found someone that had put this awesome Star Wars idea.


I’m pretty proud of how it turned out and so grateful to my cake friend Monica who spent 3 hours with me working hard to get this put together. She had great tips and tricks that I’ll have to keep around to make caking easier on the next one.
 
Happy Birthday Ben!
 

Saturday, April 26, 2014

Jacob's Favorite Scripture

Tonight during our family scripture time Jacob shared with us his favorite scripture:  Alma 30:8-9.  We then asked him why he liked this scripture.  Here is his response:

"I like the beginning, the end, and the part in the middle, and it tells me something.  I don’t know what it tells me, but it does tell me something."

Monday, April 21, 2014

Jacob Interprets His World

April 17, 2014
Jacob was VERY excited to show me that he found a dot to dot game in the Book of Mormon today.



I had to stifle a laugh and then go show Gina what he found. It was the table of contents with the dot dot dot lines across to line up the page number to the book name.

Smell My Breath

April 17, 2014
Skyping dad. Jacob blows in the mic "can you smell my breath?"


Toilet Duty

Long story short. Jacob has been horrible the last two days. At every turn of every minute toward every person. This morning I couldn't handle it anymore so he had to call dad at 2:00 am and wake him up to report in and get a punishment. He chose scrubbing the toilets. Knowing that when he pooped on the floor two weeks ago he had been a disaster to deal with when I made him clean it up himself I had to have a plan to counter the difiance I knew was coming after school when toilet time would finally materialize. My chosen bonus punishment for any whiny comment or cry of injustice was that for every comment I got to eat TWO pieces of his Easter candy.

Finally it was five o'clock and time to start the scrubbing. Good news. Bad news. Jacob LOVES cleaning toilets. Not a single complaint came outta the kid doing all four bathrooms (Gina wisely opted out of the punishment of washing her toilet so as to avoid the five year old mess he would create when he was "cleaning"). When he finished he asked me to ALWAYS ask him to scrub toilets whenever I need it done. I replied to him saying that he could scrub Ms Jennifer's too because she had 5 dirty ones today. He clasp his hands together in front of his chest and his eyes lit up like Fourth of July fireworks. You would have thought I gave him the worlds best Christmas present.

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Halal Hot Dogs?

Ben's in a great mood. He's skyping with dad tonight at 10pm. Alone. No little wild brothers or sisters to interrupt. It has been a good call. Brian tried to share a little about what he is learning and things he is seeing. He explained what "halal" means (allowable) then asked what Ben thought the word for not allowable would be. "De-halal" was the quick response.

Next question was about hot dogs. Ben asked Brian if they had seen them there. Brian thought he had. So Ben queried, "Do they just have to call them 'hot' because they can't have dogs there?" Hilarious kid.

Last one for the day. Brian tells him that we MIGHT be getting plane tickets really soon for our move. Ben says why not for sure. "Because we have to have Exxon buy some of them and that makes it slow." "But why are they slow?" ISN'T THAT THE MILLION DOLLAR QUESTION THESE DAYS AROUND OUR HOUSE.

Prayers for Mom

Jacob prayed for me this morning.

"Please bless mom if she does yoga today. Because she does it in a parking lot and she has to do it on the hard floor and she puts a mat down on the hard floor but she can feel right through it."

Saturday, April 12, 2014

Lost Media on iTunes

Ha! Downloaded an iTunes movie on Tuesday to watch. It downloaded and then instantly disappeared from my rented list so I can't play it because it can't be found. Finally did a help ticket tonight. Got the auto response email saying basically "we got it and will reply soon." It suggested I review the linked articles below. I clicked on the one that was for lost media. The web page came up with an error that said:

"We're sorry. We can't find the page you're looking for."

That isn't the most encouraging message...I'm writing about something that is lost and they lost the directions on how to find lost stuff. Hmmm. 

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Ashlyn's Name

Ashlyn is trying to mimic the names she is hearing. If you ask her what her name is she will tell you Ashey (pronounced ash-E). This matches with Angie, Maddie and Jakey.

We also call Madison “Maddie Mae”. One day two weeks ago she was jabbering away in a sing song voice in her car seat as we went along the highway. She was saying “Maddie Mae, Maddie Mae, Maddie Mae.” Then she mixed it up a bit, “Maddie Mae, Maddie Mae, Ashey Mae, Ashey Mae.”

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Helper No More

The truth is we, as a family, will be perfectly fine without a helper after our move. It will be more work for me undoubtably. I will need to cut back my extra curricular activities like helping in the classroom, 3 room mom jobs, 2 Cub Scout jobs and helping others do their various projects and things. The kids as well will need to cut back their extra curricular gigs to a minimum because instead of dropping off and picking them up I will need to be home cooking dinner so we eat on time and this get to bed on time because that starts the mornings out better.

The thing we will miss when we lose the extra help is the level of excellence. The attention to detail. The perks. At the close of each day we have scriptures and prayer with the kids then Brian and I are free to do our stuff. Tonight Gina and Brian are both gone and I out everyone to bed and returned to the kitchen to work another hour cleaning dishes, wiping the table, taking out the trash and putting away the food. And I just didn't have the energy anymore to think of picking up the toys and to tidy the living room like I would usually do.

Dinner prep time was a joke. Ashlyn missed her real nap because I wasn't home for her to sleep in her bed and Gina wasn't here so I couldn't leave her here. Instead she snoozed for 45 minutes in the car while I drove a bit and picked up Jacob and Anderson from school. It wasn't long enough. Then this afternoon I had to tear apart the entire office to get the enormous three piece desk out to sell. So instead of preping the food for dinner I was in the office. I had a neighbor with the kids while I drove it to the new house and by the time I got back home and the kids back at the house it was nearly 5:30.

Ashlyn was screaming because she was tired and hungry and wouldn't let me move about the kitchen to cook. Jacob was mad that he couldn't have the candy Jennifer had given him earlier. Ben got little things wrong on nearly every math problem even though I could tell he was getting the main idea he was sloppy and. It watching the details - which of course is completely my fault and gives him just cause to yell at me. He wouldn't listen to me explain but just said he can't do it.

Between all the anger and then the time puts and fighting between Maddie and Jacob dinner made it to the table at 7:05pm. That's 5 min past our ideal bedtime. And of course, even though it was a special request dinner from Ben and Maddie, Jacob hated it. I made our traditional April Fool's Day dinner. Meatballs and mashed potatoes that look like cupcake and frosting. With set up jello in their cups to "drink." I didn't get a single vegetable or anything else made. 



One highlight of the night though was watching Ashlyn try to eat stuff. She took one bite of the bright green mashed potato "frosting" and put the cupcake right back on the plate. She wanted the "juice" instead. It was hilarious to watch her try and try to tip the cup and for the juice to run down into her mouth. She sucked and slurped and made noises that should have helped but nothing did. Finally she put the cup back down on the get table and looked at it. And poked it. And when it bounced back she started to giggle. Then she looked around at Jacob and Ben who were using spoons in their cups. Then she tried again to drink it by tipping the cup before she grabbed a spoon and dug in.

It was a fun, fun night at the dinner table for sure. But that's all that was easy. Dinner was late, bedtime was late, everyone was mad, I was not able to sit and get kids with homework without being distracted by my kitchen duties and the time ticking by so quickly as Ashlyn got more and more upset.

We will also miss that we always have laundry that magically appears in neatly folded baskets in our rooms. The toilets are always clean. The floors get swept and mopped on a regular, consistent basis and I mean the whole floor, not just the bad spots I spot clean when they get a spill. We will miss the clean windows, the lack of dust on our shelves, the grocery shopping that is always done and the dishes being washed at least very hour. It seems there isn't ever a dish in the sink. It's heavenly. Gina has been amazing.

The best part of it all though is the gift it was to enjoy Ashlyn as a baby. I didn't have that kind of freedom with any of my other kids. There was just too much going on to enjoy them. It was a blessing to have Gina with us so I could soak in every moment with my little lady in these precious two years.

Overall I have decided after the three weeks without Gina in December and the three days without Gina and Brian this week I think we will be in survival mode again where everything is done "fine" and nothing really hits the "excellence" state. That's what Gina gave our family. The time to live excellently. We will miss her and her service that allowed us to shift our focus to our children. It's been an immense blessing to see my children with eyes that aren't quite so tired all the time.