Saturday morning Logan and I were up early doing our morning routines when Evelyn woke up and came to sit nearby.  Logan looked up to see tears streaming down Evelyn's face.  He immediately hugged her and asked her what was wrong.  She looked him right in the eye and said, "I don't want to die.  I don't want you or mom to die." Then, she continued to sob.  Wow.  Logan and Evelyn talked for a while and had a good conversation about life.  She has also been very concerned about death and what happens after we die.

Later that night I was tucking Evelyn in bed and she asked me, "Mom, can we see heaven?" This question spurred a long conversation about why Jesus came to earth and about his Plan of Happiness.  We talked a lot about happiness and how his plan was made especially for us.  I just wanted to record some of the questions and insights that she had during this conversation  I was very impressed with how she put her knowledge and ideas together to form 'logical' conclusions.  

We talked a lot about what happens after you die. We talked about being together with our families and with our husbands and wives.  She asked me if Grandpa Kelly would be there waiting for her.  I told her that even though we can not see Grandpa Kelly that he was there with her and that I had felt him with me.  She loved that.

Here are a few highlights of the conversation

• She asked me if one of our older friends in the ward would be going to heaven soon.
• She asked if their was a stairway that we climbed up to heaven.
• "Will we be lifted into heaven on a bed?" This was an interesting question to me because it showed her trying to figure out how we stand up after we die.
• "Do we go to the sun, moon and stars?"
• "Is heaven in outer space?"  And the follow up question was "It is cold in outer space.  Is it super cold in heaven?"
• "Is Abinadi in heaven?"

Then she started to ask me questions about her baptism when she turns eight.  She asked me about the special white clothing, getting water in her eyes, and a few more.  Then she asked me why Jesus had to be baptized.  We had a good discussion about His amazing example for us.  

By this time Logan was involved in the conversation.

Now for my favorite part of the whole night.  She paused for a long time and you could tell that she was really thinking hard.  She asked, "Can I ask you a question about the Magic School bus?"  Then she said, "I have been thinking about the picture of when Ms. Frizzle goes into Keisha's heart. I looked, but I couldn't see the Holy Ghost inside of her heart." 

Logan fielded this question.  He asked a follow up question, "What does happiness look like?  How do you know when you are feeling happy?"  Then, he explained that we talk about the Holy Ghost being in your heart because hearts are related to love, but really you can feel the Holy Ghost through your entire body.  It is a wonderful feeling that feels kind of like happiness.  You can not see the Holy Ghost, but you know he is there because you can feel him.  

I am so proud of Evelyn.  She is growing up and learning SO much.  I am constantly amazed at what she knows and the critical thinking skills she demonstrates by putting all of that information together.  She is such a special little girl!

I really enjoyed this conversation because it made me think about the gospel of Jesus Christ in a new way.  Evelyn is at the age where she is a very concrete thinker, and the way she puts things together is so simple. 

I just wanted to take a minute and write my feelings down about the gospel and the church. I know that this gospel is the true gospel of Jesus Christ. I know that God gave me my beautiful children, and that he trusts me with them.  I know that He created an amazing plan of happiness that allows me to live with my family forever.  I know that He knows who I am and that He loves me dearly.  I have felt the promptings of the Holy Ghost many times in my life and this strengthens my testimony to the point that I can not doubt what I know and have felt.  I have been blessed in too many ways to number.  I love my family and I am so thankful for them everyday.  I love my life and the knowledge that I have of the gospel.  

I hope all of you have a wonderful week and I hope all of you know that God loves you.

Do you ever get the desire to go out and do something just for yourself?  Logan and I make sure we have date night almost every week, and we also try to find things that we can do together so that our lives are not so completely different.  I am sure that most of you know what I mean with that idea.  Anyway. This week we started a new venture with each other.  Friday was our first martial arts class together, and we have a babysitter lined up and so that we can go to class together every Friday afternoon. 

 Logan has wanted to begin a martial arts class for as long as I have known him.  Not because he thinks someone is going to attack him at any time, but mostly for the self awareness and fitness factors.  The two main problems that held him back were money and he thought that his class would be comprised mostly of fourteen year old boys.  

Things came together for us and we were able to find ways around both of these obstacles. We had a great time on Friday and both of us are very excited to get into this new sport.  We have been practicing a lot together and we are in a race to see who can become flexible the quickest!  

Also, I have wondered what our neighbors think of our new hobby. During the class we learned how to get out of a choke hold, and today we were standing in front of our kitchen window trying to figure out how we could escape of someone had his or her whole arm wrapped around our necks.  It probably didn't look very good to any onlookers.  They would have known everything was okay if they could see me laughing.  I am very ticklish on my neck!

Logan and I are also planning on starting a free online BYU course titled "Developing Self Reliant People."  We will be registering as soon as we have the materials ready.  We are excited for this course as well!

Speaking of taking classes together I have implemented a new idea with the kids.  I try to have one-on-one time with each of the kids one or two times a week.  This week I decided to give the time a little bit more purpose.  At the beginning of the week I asked the kids a subject they were interested in (Horses for Evelyn and Adalie, and dinosaurs for Jack), and we picked up books from the library on their chosen topic.  Our 'momma time' has been spent making games, reading books, and playing computer games to learn about these animals.  I have been having a lot of fun, and I think they enjoy it as well.

Today (Sunday) Jackson woke up and threw up all over himself and his bed.  Definitely not the best way to start the day.  He was his normal happy hyper self pretty soon afterward, but we knew that church was out of the question.  Logan and I decided that if we couldn't go to church we would bring primary to our house.  We decided on a 'Service and Loving Others' theme and proceeded to prepare sharing time and separate lessons to meet the ages of our kids.  The kids were great and I think all of us had a fun time.

These first pictures are from a few weeks ago when we went sledding at the nearby golf course. 

Maren was a great sport.  She is actually wide awake in this picture, and obviously resigned to her fate.  

The kids announced that they were a cake and Jack was the candle

These pictures will be great for blackmail when Jack gets older.  He and Adalie decided to switch pajamas. Jack was practicing his stance and his kicking.

Logan and I couldn't help thinking about the Mr. T speed walker commercial! If you haven't seen it you should look it up on Youtube.

Goodbye for now.  I am going to go over and check out the speed walker commercial.

Adalie and Evelyn were just playing in the corner.  Adalie started crying and Evelyn stood up quickly and hurried away.  This is the conversation that took place afterwards.

Me- "Evelyn- why is Adalie so sad?"

E- I don't know. We were just playing a game.

Me- What game where you playing?

E- It's called 'the biting game.'

Me- Oh. How do you play that game?

E- Someone sits on the other player and bites them.  Then it is the other person's turn.

Me- Interesting. Did Adalie get a turn?

E- No

Me- You should go kiss Adalie where you bit her and say you are sorry (she kissed Adalie's ear), then you need to spend some time in your room thinking about the reasons why that is not a good game to play. 

Today I will tell the highlights of our week through pictures.  I have also searched through our cameras to find the good photos that never made it to our blog.  

 Logan created a great snow house with the kids.  This was under a tree in the back corner of our backyard. Notice the use of the word 'was.' The day after this masterpiece was created the temperatures rose to 48 degrees. I am not sure what the overnight temperature was, but this beautiful masterpiece was destroyed.

 I am not even surprised that Jack isn't wearing a coat.

 I am shocked and amazed to see our sweet Adalie enjoying this fun fort without a coat or hat.

 We used to have dates every week.  Something unexplainable happened last month and we didn't have even one!  Yesterday we had an amazing date!  We went out and rekindled the romance with bowling, and eating at a great local food joint. One of the topics of conversation was the gun control issue and how so many people are taking it way out of hand.  Most of the arguments are emotional attacks that don't hold water... Then we went and rented The Dark Knight and picked up movie snacks.  Anyway... We had a wonderful time... Minus the atrocious bowling score...

 I almost cried. Good thing I had fun bowling!

The good looking couple refreshed from our date.

On to the other photos...

 Jack's first day of preschool

 Adalie's first day of preschool

Maren-in-a-box

 Apple picking and a trip to the pumpkin patch!

Evelyn's prize pumpkin

I love this picture of Jack!

 Some more pictures of our new car!

Join us again next week for more of The Hazard Chronicles.

Happy Sunday everyone!  This week has been busy and fun at the Hazard home.  We are proud to say that the play room is finished!  I will let the pictures tell the story with that one.  Also, Jackson has been amazing this week.  He is very close to being fully potty trained, and we began the process last Monday.  Here is his story..

I honestly have been stressing about potty training twins for... hmmm... since I was five weeks pregnant and I found out that I was having twins.  I am going to put a little disclaimer here. I will be talking about potty training and things associated with this exciting phase.  If you would rather remain blissfully unware then you are free to stop reading.

Lets talk for a minute about my basic philosophy of potty training that I decided on when I potty trained Evelyn. I decided to give her all of the information that she needed and to let her do it completely on her own schedule.  This worked great for her. She went back and forth for a while, but finally was potty trained mostly on her own.  I decided to do the same thing with A and J.  Jack caught on pretty quickly.  When he was in the mood he could tell me when he had to go, and even go on command.  He was beginning to catch on.  Adalie, however, was not.  She is my amazing little 'tryer.' She will try when she feels like it, but up until this second in her little life she has only gone potty once on the toilet. I think it was a fluke.  There was another time that she went poop because I recognized she was going and in one fell swoop I had her on the potty.  I don't really count this, but I figured it would be good to give her that recognition as well.

I have been waiting for the time to begin the process with both of them.  As the holidays approached I made the wise decision to wait until they were over.  Traveling, family, craziness, messed up schedules, etc. are no good for potty training.  When we arrived home I made the wonderful decision to just take on the challenge of potty training Jack.  I thought that maybe Adalie would feel a little bit of competition and decide to jump on the band wagon (absolutely no luck with that one).  I still ask Adalie if she would like to try.  Every time I get the same sing-song 'no' answer.

On Monday Jack stayed perfectly dry in the morning and then had a few accidents in the middle of the day. That evening, however, he stayed dry until bedtime.  The next two days he only had a few accidents, and I am proud to say that he has had multiple days where he is completely accident free. We, however, are still working on getting to the potty on time when it is time to go.  Does anyone have any ideas for this one? Once or twice a day he will just be a tiny bit late getting there.

On Monday I asked him every 15-30 minutes if he needed to go.  I quickly realized that he knew exactly when it was time and my asking did no good.  I put it completely up to him and he is doing great!  At night time he still wears diapers (with underwear over the top because he LOVES them), but he has woken up dry two days this week.  Life is looking good!  Jack and I also went on a date to the present store (dollar store) and out for ice cream because he filled up his stamp potty chart.  We had a great time.  He informed me that he wanted to work at Paul Bunyan (a local fast food restaurant) and then become a lumberjack and load trees on big trucks when he grows up.  He did, however, tell me that he would rather be a dentist than work at McDonalds.  I guess that is progress, right?

Potty training stories are now over. You can resume reading if you were a little bit squeamish about the above topic.  You now know what has been on my mind a lot this week.

Some cute stories about the kids:
On Thursday I overheard Evelyn playing in the playhouse with Adalie and Jackson.  They were playing Scripture Scouts.  Evelyn is Sue, Jack is Skyler and Adalie is always the little dog named Boo.  Anyway, I overheard Evelyn asking Adalie and Jackson how we knew that Jesus loves us.  Then, she started listing a bunch of things that Jesus did for us.  After that she explained that there were many things WE could do to show Jesus that we love Him.  She listed a bunch of ideas and then asked Adalie and Jackson to brainstorm with her.  I could not be more proud of my kids!  Especially Evelyn.  She is SUCH a good example and a good big sister.

Tonight, after bedtime, Jack was completely pushing my buttons.  I heard his sweet singsongy voice calling me downstairs yet again.  I went down a little bit upset and I found him staring intently at his hand.  He was using his fingers on one hand to create the handshape for 'I love you' in sign language on his other hand. He held up his hand proudly and said, "This means airplane!"  Which is true, but not what I expected.  Then, he said sweetly, "It also means 'I love you.'" My heart just about melted!  He has been trying to get this handshape down for a few days.  He always asks me to make it for him.

I have been doing Signing Time with the kids and teaching them Sign Language.  I have been having a lot of fun with it, and they have too.  I should have began a long time ago, but secretly I was scared that I wouldn't know all of the answers when I felt like I should.  I finally got over that feeling and we are having a great time!

On to the playhouse pictures! It should be noted that Logan was amazing for this project.  He built this house in one day without any plans.  He did a wonderful job! We had all of the vinyl lettering done by a woman in our ward named Kerri Jackson.  She did a great job.


Welcome to our play room!

The dress up corner.  I love the fancy cowboy 'dress up' sign equipt with hooks to hang up hats.

We love this thrift store find!  We used it to create a toy box for brick block storage.
 

He wasn't smiling so we told him to at least make a face for the camera

Showing off the playhouse

The window sill is our 'truck center.'

Maren is posing to show the 'house' underneath the treehouse. Notice the stacking boxes with papa's wonderful home made blocks and the fun foamy 'wooden' bulding blocks with screws from Grandma and Grandpa Hazard

Proudly diplaying the bookshelf!  This is actually to demonstrate that this wonderful bookshelf is too high for some of our kids to reach!  Don't worry though, they all have access to plenty of books!  That is one thing they are not deprived of.

The closest we came to a smile! 

This is the view from the door.  The treehouse is obviously on the left, the toy box is on the far right wall, and the dress up station is in a cubby area behind the door.