What's in a Name?

My full name is Kati McCall (Lindquist) Howard.



Let me tell you how it came to be that.



When my parents found out I was going to be a girl they tried to come up with some girl names-- like everyone who is expecting a baby does. My mom always said they didn't agree on many. She liked the names Marren and Claire, while my dad preferred something different. One of the only names they could agree on was Katie.



If I back up a little, I'll tell you the reason why they settled on Katie. When my mom was little her grandpa, my great-grandpa, said she was just as cute as a little Katidid bug. Now, I'll have you know that I googled an image of an actual Katidid bug, and I must say... cute wasn't exactly the word I would have used to describe it. However, this little pet name he came up with for her was special because he died when she was in her youth.



Flash forward 20 years and my parents agreed that they would name me Katie, but Kati.... no E. ** This proved to be difficult for teachers and friends... as they always spelt my name with an E. It use to bother me and I would tell them my name isn't Kati-E , it's Kat-I. Eventually I got tired of correcting people and just let them spell it however they thought it was.... unless they asked in which I case I told them how to correctly spell it. And so it was decided upon I was going to be named Kati.



Today I thought it would be interesting to google my name and see what popped up. These are all the images that came up from just typing in Kati..... although I had to search a few pages into it. Most of them pictured many other Kati's.... some old, some young.



Kati:

Here is another Kati's Blog header.... I thought she had good taste... very pretty and all.

Did you know there is a modern furniture line in Finland called Kati?

And these beautiful Cymbidium Orchids were picked by Kati... my kind of gal.

And here is Kati's plane.... pretty cool. Bet you didn't know I had a plane, huh?

And just look at these lovely Kati fish!

Here is a retro looking rack to hold books, it's called... wouldn't know it.... the Kati rack.

And, wow look at those tasty looking Kati rolls, who knew my name looked so yummy?

And here we go, just to show that the name Kati isn't all frills and fluff... it's the Kati tank! Watch out boys.

Again, some lovely dishes.... the Kati line.

This picture cracked me up... it's from Kati's Star Wars blog! Featuring these lovely Star Wars Cupcakes....this Kati has too much time on her hands!

And look, it's Kati's violin. Ironic....I used to play the violin.

I thought these nature pictures were pretty, Kati's Cliffs and Kati's butterfly.

Upon finally agreeing on a first name, my parents had the fun task of choosing a middle name. I know some people never get middle names, but in my family they did. :o) Now my middle name was easier chosen than my first name... after all your middle name is predominately used by your parents, when you're in trouble in most cases. My parents were set on Kati Nicole. However, as you all know my name didn't end up Kati Nicole..... "how did it become Kati McCall?" you ask?

Here's the story.... my mom's mom, we call her Nanny, was on the phone with my mom. During their conversation she told Nanny they were going to name me Kati Nicole. To which my Nanny replied.... "Oh Kati McCall, what an interesting name." They went back and forth with my mom saying, "No, Kati Nicole...." and of course my Nanny would say back, "Yes, Kati McCall, I like it. It's so unusual." So here I am today.... Kati McCall.

Here are the Google results for McCall......

McCall:

You could all go to camp McCall, I've never been myself, but the sign looks creepy enough with that roaring fire, bright full mom and a cross that appears to be hanging from a tree... what?

Or you could own one of these lovely little McCall dolls.

Here is the McCall home.... pretty colonial style if I don't say so myself.

And here's a great shot of the mountains near McCall.

I've actually been to this lake... and have a picture quite similar to this one.... it's in... McCall, ID, duh!

And here's a classy cartoon picture of a McCall car. Very retro.

Who could resist ole' Cash McCall music? I've never heard of him.

And on the flip side.... who HASN'T heard of McCall's sewing patterns? I swear my mom alone owned tons of them. That's probably the only place I ever saw my middle name until I moved to Idaho.

Here's a great picture of my favorite weather station, Channel 7.... "We're first, live, local."

And here's a pretty picture of McCall park in D.C.

Don't worry.... I've only got two more names left. :o) Lindquist as you all know was given to me from my dad, although I've now taken on the last name Howard. I remember after Tyler and I were first married how weird it sounded to say Kati Howard, or how purely by instinct I would sign Kati Lindquist on accident... I mean I only wrote it my whole life. It always sounded weird being called sister Howard, doesn't everyone know that's Tyler's mom? Now that Tyler and I have been married for almost 3 years.... I no longer feel strange to my "new" name.

The google results for Howard were more predictable.... funny how the majority of them are African American people. I wonder how many generations back Tyler's family was all black.

Howard:

The famous baseball player Ryan Howard of course.....

And who could forget Dwight Howard in this classic superman dunk?

And wouldn't you know it Howard University came up, as did Howard Interior Design Co, and Howard Stern.... probably the only white man to come up under the Howard google search.

I was just thinking about names and such because a girl in our ward, Jessica Cranny, is pregnant and we were talking about names. She and her husband are having a difficult time deciding/ agreeing on one. To some people naming a child is pure instinct, other's are named after family members. Jessica told us how she once knew a girl named Rose Hedges.... who does that to their child? While I was looking online I found a website called: http://www.funnynames.com/. It had lists of all the absurd names people have. One listing I found was A. Hah......... Cheesy I know.

I remember when we finally agreed on a name for our baby boy.... Quincy, obviously, ...... we couldn't pick a middle name. I liked the name Taylor, but we decided that having the initials Q.T. would be a little much for a teenage boy or even a grown man. Thus he became Quincy James.

I know their are people out there who dislike their names.... but not me. Every part of my name is special. It reminds me of people I love.

Saturday is a Special Day....

... It's the day we get ready for Sunday!

Our Saturday wasn't anything particularly special, but it was fun nonetheless. We slept in until 10:00!! Can you believe it? What baby has ever slept in that long? Certainly not ours.... but on this day he did. Lucky us!

Here is Quincy lounging around reading his books.

And of course hamming it up for the camera...

He thinks he's pretty funny.

After we all had a chance to get eat, and get dressed for the day we headed out.

Quincy cleans up pretty nice huh? This was pretty much the most decent picture I could get of him... sometimes he loves to smile for the camera.... at this point he was all done posing.

And we can't leave the house without mom's purse/ diaper bag..... Obviously Quincy knew this, which is why he's getting into it, eerrrrr.... I mean.... making sure mom doesn't forget it. :o)

Quincy, what are you doing?

Nothing mom, just looking for snacks!

Our first stop:

The library.

Who ever knew the library could be so much fun. I used to dread going there and always tried to make my trips as quick as possible. Not anymore! Now we spend at least three days a week there... they have lots of things to do. Mom can read magazines, Dad can study for exams, Mom can check her Email, Dad can read the newspaper online, Quincy can read new books that he's never read before, and he can play with new toys-- which might I add, are probably covered in germs-- but the best part about going to library.... is that we can check out movies for FREE!

I know this sounds lame, but seriously it's SSSSSOOOO worth it. Especially if you don't have the money to rent movies every week, like we don't. Sure, you don't get a selection of new releases.... sometimes you're lucky if you find movies from 2008, but you get any DVD for a week! Please, tell me how many movie rentals places let you have recent movies for a week long for FREE????! None, which is why we love the library. In fact, I just borrowed 5 movies, which I'll keep for this entire week long and not one of them is older than 2 years. Pretty sweet huh? Bet you never thought the library was cool either? This has really helped out in our budget, or lack there of, for entertainment...... now if only the library had new clothes and food you could borrow, okay, maybe the food was a bad idea. You know what I mean. :o)

Our next stop, which I tired to find a picture of-- but couldn't, was Other Mothers. Quincy is once again growing out of his clothes. Another great place to save money. We took in his old clothes, got store credit for them, and brought home some new clothes. I love this store. Everything is clean and good quality clothing for next to nothing, or in our case really nothing because we pay with credit. If you have one near you.... check it out. It'll be worth you're time, especially if you're thinking what am I going to do with all this baby stuff and no more babies?

Our last stop of the day was:

We love shopping at Winco. The store always has the lowest prices and, for the most part, the checkers aren't as stupid as Walmart cashiers.... sorry if you're a Walmart Cashier. You're probably not that stupid. :o) We stocked up our cupboards, for at least a week or two since Tyler had to go out of town. I'm sure I've told you this before but I love full cupboards, there are few feelings as great as that one!

That's it................................

Now you've heard about our boring life, and some of our money saving tips.

Oh What a Night

On Friday Tyler's parents asked if we would like to go out to dinner with them. Of course, we said yes. At 6:30PM we headed out to:

Cracker Barrel.

I had never even heard of this place before and I didn't even know where one was, but I wasn't about to say no to going out to dinner on a Friday night!

It was pretty good.... most of the food is comfort, home style cooking like this:

Tyler order some cod fillets, I got a big chef salad, Quincy had a hamburger and fries, Teesy ordered some meat patty thing with country gravy and grits (I had never tasted grits before, and I have to say I always imagined grits would look something like a dog would eat... but in reality they looked similar and tasted similar to rice), while Kent got the breakfast sampler. Everything was good... it reminded me of going to my Grandma Rena's house. She always cooked food like that.

After we were all stuffed full of home style cooking we headed back home. On the way out of Cracker Barrel Quincy saw these toys for cats. One was a ferret and the other was a mouse which moved around. He was mesmerized.

All in all, it was a nice night. Although Kent and Teesy had to head back home.... we were glad we could go out with them. Thanks for dinner guys! Quincy always loves to put on a show when they, or anyone else, comes around.

And as a side note.... don't you love the Mohawk. His hair is getting long, as is Tyler's, but I've just been putting off cutting their hair because I haven't been up to the task. Thus, the Mohawk!

Beauty in the heart of sadness....

Just last year the daughter of a woman in our ward passed away at the young age of 30. I had the opportunity to give of my services in helping with the funeral flowers. The family didn't have a large budget for the funeral last year and so the daughter was cremated. They requested that I make a wreath of silk flowers to go around the urn. I was pleased to help where I could and gave of my services for free.

Although the family is inactive, I hope that because of the love and service given by members in our ward they will someday feel comfortable enough to start coming to church again. This year I was called again by the Relief Society president to help with the mother's funeral flowers. I, again, was glad to help. Though I feel it was unfortunate that the same family who mourned a death last year for a daughter & niece is now mourning for a sister & mother.... it was somehow easier for me to work with the family. I felt much more comfortable offering words of kindness to them.

I think the flowers turned out nicely... they were exactly what they requested, a wreath for the urn and a long low arrangement to sit in front of a large picture of the woman who died.
This is a birds eye picture of the low arrangement:

And this was how the wreath for the urn turned out:

There are some things I like and don't like about being a floral designer. One thing I don't enjoy the most about my line of work is having to deal with mourning families. But the thing that makes funeral work easier on them and myself is knowing that I can give ugly circumstances a beautiful piece of art to remember their loved ones by.

I hope that all of you can show love to the ones you love most today!

At 17 Months Quincy can do the Following things:

I know, I know... I'm a couple of days late. I would have posted this earlier when Quincy technically turned 17 months.... BUT we didn't have internet that day. By some gracious miricle from the Lord we are getting it in our bedroom today.

Quincy is up to lots of new things this month. Besides the update I gave from last week.... he has learned to climb on almost anything, as pictured below. He is so resourceful... just look at the way he has scooted the crock pot box up close to the counter so he can reach into the kitchen sink to help with the dirty dishes! By the way, I'm so embarassed to have a picture with all the dirty dishes in the sink.

On a more spiritual note Quincy has learned to fold his arms for prayers. Although he doesn't always do this consistently........and the arm folding doesn't usually last through an entire dinner prayer, but Hey! Aren't we just so proud he has learned to do it period?

Quincy has also learned to say his animal sounds like: quack quack for a duck, meow for a cat, and woof for a dog. If we had a video camera I would have posted this because he sounds really cute saying them. Just today he was learning what a bird says, tweet tweet. He is just a fountain of knowledge these days!

Quincy has also learned to hold a fork by himself.... and to feed himself! He loves eating with utensils now and does it with almost any food. I caught him trying to eat dry cereal with a fork... talk about a challenge, he was trying so hard to get that cereal to stay on his fork while he lifted it to his little mouth. I know this isn't a great picture of him, but you get the idea.

Quincy is also in the process of learning to hold up two fingers. We are trying to teach him this before his second birthday. He knows how to hold up two pointer fingers, but not 2 fingers on one hand. He can say two though... we've been asking him, "How old are you gonna be on your birthday Quincy?" To which he replies with a huge smile, "tu". WAaaaaYYY cute. I tried to get him to hold up his fingers but he wouldn't.

Pretty soon he'll just be talking up a storm..... I'm sure you can't wait to hear that. :)

Howard Update

Just wanted to let you all know that we're not dead. Sorry it's been a while since we've put anything new or exciting on here.... in fact, if you were hoping we would be posting exciting news and pictures... I have some bad news for you, we're not.



My camera's batteries have been dead for a while and I keep forgetting to recharge them, you'll be happy to know that they are in the charger right now... so pictures will be coming in the near future.



I will however take some time to catch you all up on the latest around our house.

Tyler is working on getting his Life Insurance license. He's taking online classes and tests, which the company is paying for.... very nice. It is great that he can get this license with the help of his company.

Kati is working on getting the motivation to start running again, actually, it's more like she's trying to get rid of the lack of motivation. I haven't been doing much work for The Florist at Edward's.... and so I've been on the job hunt for the just the right florist. It's tough trying to find the right company who will appreciate you for what you're worth. I think the worst part of working for someone else, not that I would mention this to any future or current employer, is them telling you what you're worth. It's somewhat depressing to know that you're only worth $9 or $10 an hour. At any rate, I'm grateful for my current employer and the flexibility that they've allowed me.... I'm just ready to see what else is available out there. I have also been busy working on digital scrapbooking. I love the program that Tyler got me for Christmas. It's so much fun.... if only I didn't have to be a responsible wife or mother then I could spend all day working on it. So far... I've only made it through my bridal pictures and some wedding ones. I'm so behind... but hopefully by this year I'll be caught up, or close.

Quincy is busy as ever. He has grown up so much lately. Although I don't notice any particular differences in his growth physically, I notice his growth intellectually. He comprehends much more of what we say now. He has even taken the initiative to try and emulate certain words we say. Sometimes he can make the same sounds, but more often they come out a little bit like gibberish. He has added the words: shoe and sock to his vocabulary. Quincy loves to read; He is learning his colors and even knows how to sign cat, bird, dog, and hungry. He knows how to do the hokey poky... which I would have on camera except that our camera's batteries died.

He shows interest in other kids and plays pretty well with them. At church he loves to see all the babies. He even tried to hold another baby's hand last night at our ward's ice cream social. He's very curious about little babies and shows great caution around them.... thank goodness. I don't know how long this will last. We are trying to teach him to fold his arms, which he does only half of the time we ask him to. He still can point to Jesus' picture, but won't say his name.

We haven't made any further progress with the potty, but we don't mind. We are content that he likes to sit down on his potty while we are in the bathroom. He'll get there someday. He is still a picky eater, which I blame solely on Tyler's childhood of picky eating. He did, however, try a tangerine slice and actually ate it. Hopefully his taste buds will expand, if only we can get his grandparents to stop feeding him sugary foods. :)

He has mastered climbing, running and throwing, a true boy through and through. He likes to help us dress him, by putting his arms in the holes of his jacket. He also knows how to put his beanie hats on. He understands where his socks and shoes go, but has yet to figure out how to get them on his feet. His belly button is yet another body part he has added to his list of: eyes, nose, mouth, teeth, toungue, ears, hair, head, belly, toes, fingers, hand, foot, and peanut. Quincy likes to hold utensils now, like forks and spoons. I prefer the forks where possible as the food has a better probability of actually staying on the utensil until it gets to his mouth. And speaking of mouths, he has developed a recent hatred for teeth brushing since we have decided that only we will be doing the brushing.

Quincy still gives great kisses... though his kisses now are usually closed mouth, as opposed to the old open mouth kisses that he used to give. He has also learned how to shift his weight from side to side.... he does this a lot to music, it's funny. He is working on jumping. He makes it to the top of his tippy toes and then that's as far as he gets. Tyler and Quincy work daily with his basketball hoop he got for Christmas. I think by the time Quincy's 2 he'll be able to dunk it. The other day he had emptied out one of his toy baskets, turned it upside down and put it underneath the hoop, then he climbed on top of it with a ball like he was going to dunk it himself. Funny boy!



Thursday we had some friend's from the ward over for hot dogs and hamburgers to watch the Oklahoma vs. Florida game. Saturday night we went to the ward's ice cream social. I think that basically sums oup our social life here. I guess we made a few trips to the library.... man, we're party animals.

We hope you are all having a great week! Pictures soon to follow.

It's just not quite the same being back in Boise

Our trip home to Boise was less eventful than the trip to Vancouver. This, of course, was a blessing. The only downside to our trip home, besides having to leave Vancouver, was that poor little Quincy had developed quite the cold. He had a lovely snotty nose, and a beautiful wheezing cough. I felt so bad for him.


Thankfully we had lots of toys and snacks for the long trip. This is how Quincy spent the majority of our trip.................

..............Playing with his magic doodle and throwing all his toys across the back seat. When he had used the remainder of his energy throwing toys around our car he passed out like this:

All in all, Quincy was quite the trooper during our long trek home. He only got frustrated the last hour; The times he did start to cry he could hardly squeak with his scratchy little voice and so his whimpers were much more bearable.

Usually when we come home from our "vacations" we end up saying "Man, I think we need another vacation. It's nice to go, but it's always good to be home." It is nice to be home, but I think this time I was a little sad to be back. I love Christmas time it's always so pretty. Plus my mom has all these beautiful Christmas decorations:

In fact, growing up my mom always started putting up Christmas decorations well before Christmas. We always used to give her a hard time about it, but I find that as I've gotten older, I wish I had some, or any, Christmas decorations to put up.

Tyler and I never had decorations after we were first married because we were college students. Who had the room or space to hall around Christmas trees and breakable ornaments? Tyler always convinced me it wasn't such a big deal that we didn't have any Christmas decorations because we never spent Christmas at home. His argument was: Why buy Christmas decorations that we won't enjoy because we're spending Christmas somewhere else?

This year I was talking to my mom about it before Christmas. I told her I sorta wished we had some stuff to put up, but it's hard to justify spending the money on things we will only use once a year. She hinted that perhaps Santa could help us out.

Well, Santa did just fine.... he managed to get us a 7ft. artificial Christmas tree 75% off for a whopping $12.50! What a bargain shopper that Santa is. Santa also was able to help us by purchasing some beautiful ornaments for our tree. He even found us some pretty silver stockings. Santa did such a wonderful job getting our Christmas decor started. I decided that I wasn't going to take no for an answer from Tyler. On Friday we went shopping and hit up Target's 75% off Christmas Sale.

Taking my mom's advice, I had already searched Target's website to see what ornaments I wanted. When I knew what I wanted it was all downhill... all I had to do was wait until the 75% off sale came. I was very nervous that all the ornaments would be gone and that I'd only be able find bits and pieces of things.... boy was I wrong. I found every single ornament that I wanted and then some. We even got some white lights for the tree for .59 cents a box!! I made Tyler buy 10, which he wasn't too happy about.... Later he agreed that it wasn't so bad only paying .59 cents.

All in all I spent just barely over $20.00 and got well over 300 ornaments.... amazing wouldn't you say? It was worth the wait. I was so happy after we got home. It took everything in me to resist the urge to rip open our tree and decorate it. Tyler convinced me that it will be that much more exciting when next year's Christmas comes. I agree..... It will be magical.

As you can see, we're going to for an icy pale blue and silver Christmas decor theme.

Next year's conquest will be getting some nice dishes and silverware..... like this. My mom has beautiful china.

I am so thankful that Santa helped us out with our Christmas decorations....

I'm also thankful that we could spend Christmas with my family. It's hard living far away from them.... I mean, I know it could be worse, we could live in China, or Boston, or somewhere far far away, but sometimes Boise is far enough. It's also nice that all my brother's are still home around the holidays.

Even though there are times that my brothers would much rather hang out with their "cool" high school friends than their older sister, brother in-law, and nephew... it's nice to hang out together.

I miss being around my mom. It's nice having someone who understands exactly what I mean without having to explain it. My dad's pretty cool too.... although he teases a lot. Wednesday before New Year's the missionaries in my parent's ward came to their house in need of some hair cuts. I agreed to cut their hair free of charge, after all we needed some blessings and hopefully when my son is on a mission someone will be so kind to him. During the whole haircutting process my dad was teasing the Elder's about how bad their haircuts were looking. One of the Elder's name was Elder Prettyman (I thought his name sounded bogus like a porn stars name, or some weather man's name or something). I bet he got a lot of crap growing up with a last name like Prettyman.

Needless to say, this Elder was a little reluctant about letting some strange girl he'd never met, with no haircutting training, cut his hair. It didn't turn out bad.... although I accidentally nicked the back of his neck with the haircutting clippers, which I've NEVER done before! I felt really bad about that. This Elder had only been out four months and already was being relentlessly teased by my dad. Anyone who knows my dad, just puts up with it. Hopefully the experience wasn't too traumatic for Elder Prettyman.

Every family is a little nuts... that's why it's so refreshing to be around my family. It's nice to know you're not the only weird ones. Take Quincy for instance.... in my parent's home wearing metal bowls on your head is perfectly normal.

It is also perfectly acceptable to be yourself, in Quincy's case this means being a complete spaz!

If you don't want to see how crazy they are then you can look the other way............This is what Tyler has decided to do.

***Okay, just kidding, this was taken Christmas morning when Tyler wasn't supposed to be peeking at Quincy's (And his) basketball hoop which wasn't wrapped. He was told to advert his eyes.

At my parent's house it's not all chaos and weirdo's. Sometimes we do fun things.... like eating pumpkin pie.

Or hanging out with grandpa on the floor.

(***I thought this picture was cute because Quincy grabbed his own pillow and put it down on the floor to lay next to grandpa without any coaxing from us.)

Tyler and I look pretty normal here... don't we?

Quincy loves being at my parent's house because he can always find a comfy pillow to chill out on.

But when it becomes to much to look at, I just put this on:

This is one of my favorite gifts that Tyler got me. I'm such a light sleeper and it is by FAR the best sleep mask ever! Tyler turned on the light one night to find his phone and I didn't even flinch because I was still laying in the dark with my sleep mask!

If the weirdos in our house aren't enough there are always more at Walmart.... this is where Quincy found this cool tricycle.

And speaking of weirdos.... this is a great picture of Uncle Kar kar (as Quincy puts it). The rest of us call him Uncle Karter.

This is a pretty classy picture of another weirdo in the Lindquist home, Uncle Scott. Doesn't he look like trouble?

In Grammie and Grandpa's home it s perfectly acceptable to walk around with your buns hanging out... well only if your name is Quincy.

Okay, but seriously Quincy likes his potty chair. He sits on it all the time with his pants on, and even carries it around the house. Now if only we could talk him into sitting on it with his bare bum. This is what Tyler was trying to do in the picture below:

See how well the potty pep talk went? Notice that he is clinging to Tyler's legs for dear life.... Please don't make me touch my bare bum to the potty dad!

Since we've been home Quincy's shown more interest in sitting on his potty. He even took the initiative to sit on it with dad in the bathroom.

I guess you could call it a group poop. :)

***Just kiddin, they're both wearing pants... well Quincy has a diaper on.

Oh, how our little boy is growing up. And speaking of growing up...................

I had to help Tyler in primary because his teaching companion was gone. Lets just say that the class was a handful, mostly because the first of the year with new teacher's is pretty hard on the kids.... especially Tyler's class because they were sunbeams last year. Since the kids demanded that we both be hands on, I put Quincy in Nursery. I felt bad at first because he'll be in Nursery in 6 more Sundays..... but they only had two kids in there, this made me feel better. I came to get him at the end of sharing time and he was doing so good! It's crazy to see him in Nursery.... what happened to my sweet little helpless baby boy? He's getting so grown up.

Even though I took a little detour from what I was talking about... I just wanted to let my family know that we love spending time with them, even if they're all wierd. :o) HA!

*****Oh and before I forget.... A note to Ms. Jennifer P.

Liam is so funny. He was the best kid in class and knew all the right answers. He was being such a good example to the other boys..... it cracked me up that he gave us specific directions on how to make kool aide. :o) So you may not make it to church on time... so what, your kids are great!