Kashann and Clan

I have been letting a few blog posts pile up here and suddenly I feel this urgency to get them all down, before I have ZERO time to do so. I don't have time to edit or write fancy so it may come across a bit jumbled.


Here's post # ONE
As of tomorrow I will be a working mother. For a short six weeks, while Brent's assistant takes her maternity leave, but right now those weeks seem like an eternity. I am so excited to have my chance to be with my husband. . . All Day Long. .. Right By His Side. . and also become more involved with the business. BUT. 

At the same time I just keep thinking of my two year old son who I won't be with all day long and it makes me want to cry. We have been so spoiled, Marcus and I. I have always been a spoiled stay at home mom.  But both Brent and I feel like this is a good time for me to learn the workings of the office so I can be be capable of filling in for someone who is sick, or having babies I guess. Last week his assistant went home sick unexpectedly. I thought maybe this was it, she was going into labor. We still hadn't worked out a replacement and Brent was a bit panicky. I found a sitter for Marcus and came in for the day. Brent introduced me like he usually does if I am in the office while he is seeing a patient, as his "cleaning lady". I had no prior experience and so I had a crash course in dental assisting in the form of on the job training. Obviously, I was terrible and never had anything ready when he needed, nor could I even identify the instrument that he needed in time to reach for it before he ended up deciding he'd do it himself. But he was still happy to have someone by his side, if no other reason than to have the "cleaning lady" there full time I guess. He told one patient I was his wife and apologized for my clumsiness, saying "Well, she's better than nothing." Which he sincerely meant as a compliment but as you can imagine the other two people in the room didn't see it that way.
Just now I finally hired a babysitter though and am jumping in making a commitment to give this a go. I hope the Casper's survive the next six weeks. I can't even imagine what a 32 hour work week is going to do to my perfect laundry record. Things don't stack up in my laundry room. It is one of my talents.


POST #2 Let's move on to Marcus. Speaking of laundry he comes to mind. The last time we stayed in a hotel, I lost our bag of laundry. I had looked everywhere, probably spent an accumulative hour looking for a bag of socks and panties and finally gave up and went to the car leaving Brent for the final look around. He's much more thorough. He found the laundry. It was in the freezer. I never would've thought to check in there.
The great thing is the more mischievous he is the more I just love him to death. Even though I am cursing while I clean up his mess I am laughing thinking, "Wow, I really do have a son now don't I?" The other day he was completely black head to toe. I followed the soot back to our upstairs fireplace. The one we've only lit once since moving here because Brent doesn't believe in fireplaces unless it's a wood stove because the other kind "don't put out heat, just suck it up. He made an exception for Christmas Eve and so it was full of ash. Marcus had climbed in apparently. And brought his books and his stuffed animals. The good thing about my son is that he learned his lesson. After seeing a black elephant and dirty books he will never have a playhouse in the fireplace again. I am sure that he will come up with something else equal though. See this is why I love boys. Girls don't climb in fireplaces.


POST #3 Caroline wears a snowsuit to school everyday. It's one of those bib ones that has gone through four kids. She looks like enormous in it. It's hideous. But she has to wear a snowsuit for everyone of the three recesses a day so she just puts it on in the morning and takes it off at night. I hardly even have time to wash it so it also usually filthy. You don't know how hard it is to send her off everyday in that. I guess I need to stop buying her clothes and just get her a wardrobe of snowsuits.
Caroline also sleeps walk. I am a very light sleeper. Mother's have to be. Every night lately I wake up to the sound of running down the hall. I try to ignore it for awhile but it sounds so frantic so I get up and sure enough there is Caroline racing back and down the hall around the kitchen, into the living room. Her eyes are always wide open and she looks so confused. I have tried repeatedly to try to get her to say something to me but she is clearly not awake.  She can't respond in anyway. She always needs to go to the bathroom and it's a mad dash to get her into there and seated before she let's loose. After that I put her back into bed. She remembers nothing in the morning. I would be scared to leave her at someones house over night. Who knows where she might end up if her mother didn't always wake up and bring her back to bed. Caroline said the cutest thing to Marcus today after I put his new church sport coat on. He was wearing a white shirt and tie. . . and a jacket for the first time and Caroline looked at him and said, "Marcus you look like the littlest man I have ever seen."


 POST# 3 This is left over from our trip to Buffalo. Camille was the happiest one to go, because she has never forgotten about the best friend she left behind. So we dropped her off early the first morning so she could stay while we went to the funeral. Camille and I stood shivering outside her door in deep snow. Camille of course was not wearing a coat or boots. She would rather be cold than change a perfect outfit. When Sara opened up Camille burst out with a scream and grabbed her friend to give her a hug which surprisingly ended up in a kiss. Camille was so happy she momentarily lost her senses and gave her a kiss. She suddenly jumped back embarrassed and said,"I can't believe I just kissed you." Neither could her sisters who saw the kiss from the car. But that is so Camille. She is a lover and hugger and even a kisser. So watch out best friends!


POST #4 Now Savannah is hard to write about because she would prefer that no one says anything about her at all and often edits out the stuff I do say about her. I think she would let me tell you all that she had adjusted 100% to her new life/new school. She spends most of her time now downloading songs and blasting them from our computer, unfortunately teaching Marcus all the wrong kinds of music. Nothing bad mind you but lets just say he knows all the words to the gummy bear song and loves to preform it for anyone who asks complete with as he would call it, "the bum part". Just look up gummy bear song on you tube and you can see what I am talking about. Now that's not Savannah's favorite song though. She just plays that because Marcus likes it so much. He also knows her favorites and sings verses like, "daisy dukes, bikinis on top" though that song has been banned in our house for months. A two year old never forgets.


POST #5 Kennon Is officially one week away from being a teenager. Last night she uttered some infamous words that we will haunt her with for the rest of her life. We were in the car on the way to Chuck E Cheese. We only go once every couple years and decided that she also would be going along only because it was a family thing and she needed to get out of her room and quit hiding out. Who knows what we were discussing but it might've been, about how thrilled she was to spend the next two hours with us at Chuck E Cheese of all places. So she said, and this wasn't delivered with sarcasm, it was for real, "Don't you guys know by now - I don't like my family."
It was pretty silent after that. We were all feeling like we had completely failed and that things couldn't be much worse, but a couple hours later we were all joking about it and decided for her that she truly can't help liking us after all. I think it's just really hard to be the first one to turn 13 in the house. I hear things get better about 15 and I am really counting on that.




And Finally. . . Today we all had a surprise. Brent and I had an early morning interview with a member of the stake presidency. As a Mormon this is never a welcome request. It's never to make your life easier. It's always about asking you to do more, and grow more and yes definitely receive blessings but aren't we all just happy coasting along while we can? But among mormons we all have to take a turn. No one gets paid and everyone needs a break so we knew we couldn't escape responsibility forever.  So we have been stewing over this future interview for the last two weeks knowing that one of the "Brents" was moving out of our bishopric. We have Bishop Brent and 2nd counselor Brent. Well, sure enough the bishop was intent on keeping it with the Brents and now My Brent is his new 2nd counselor. Did you follow that? 

It actually was a pretty confusing sustaining. From the pulpit the stake presidency member asked if we would all like to sustain Brent W. CARTER as second counselor to which the congregation all hesitantly raised their hands of approval all wondering who in the heck this Br. Carter was. Then later he tried to fix his error but this time Brent was sustained as BRUCE W. Casper. Our kids didn't even notice the sustaining because as typical they weren't tuned into the meeting and didn't hear anyone or anything that would pull them out of their own little worlds and it wasn't until their Dad left our row to join the bishopric up on the stand that all the kids starting hollering, "Where's Dad going? What just happened?"
Brent would've loved to put this off for the rest of his life but it looks like he finally has to grow up and be in a bishopric. I am proud of him that he is willing to serve and that we are here and able to. I will miss him on Sundays but then at least I won't be just be running around wondering what the heck my husband is doing while I get everyone ready and out the door. Maybe it's for the best.