Hide and Seek

If I am ever wondering where Adilynn has crawled off to my first place to look is here. She takes out all the shoes and just likes to sit and play. Man I love this little girl!

Life is good

I am 29 today!  I guess I have finally reached the age that I will stay forever.  (Don't women always say when asked there age that they are 29?) It has been a wonderful day.  Most of you who know me know that I love birthdays!  I think it is fabulous that you get to celebrate one day a year just because you were born!  How great is that!  You get to celebrate the fact that you are you, and people are so nice to make you feel important.  I have to say that this birthday has been one of the greatest.  Thanks to wonderful family and friends, and facebook, I truly feel loved. 

The day started with a wake up call from Doug, he is so sweet and he wrote me an awesome email that made me cry.  Then some of my dear friends took me to lunch today (some couldn't make it and I missed them) and they surprised me with an awesome gift!  I went to lunch without any kids because one of my friends sweet husbands didn't have work today, and he volunteered to watch my kids for me! (Thanks Taylor).  That was  a treat by itself.  Lunch was so fun just to be with the girls, thanks for all the sacrifices made to get there to celebrate.  Then I came home and since have received a few more gifts, and phone calls, and even had a dear friend bring us pizza and cake so I didn't have to cook tonight while the hubby is gone!

I feel so grateful that I have so many wonderful friends and family in my life.  Life really is good.  I have been reading a lot lately about the compassion of our Savior Jesus Christ, and I feel that one of the greatest ways he shows compassion is giving us people in our lives to love and help us.  After a few trials and hard days, this birthday is a reminder to me that we are all loved and I am truly thankful.

Seventh Heaven

My beautiful Brielle turned seven today.  It seems unreal that she could be so old.  Time goes by so fast.  She was able to have a fabulous birthday.  We started the celebration on Saturday because Doug couldn't be here to celebrate today.  So we went out to IHOP Saturday morning.  The kids LOVE that place almost as much as Chick-fil-A.  Then we came back and opened presents, and they were able to play outside before it started raining.  (It snowed on Sunday by the way.  What?  I thought snow in March only happened in Utah!)  Then she got to go to another little girls birthday party, and come home to eat her favorite dinner which happens to be Doug's delicious alfredo pasta!

Then on Sunday the kids in Primary sang happy Birthday and she got a few birthday surprises.  Then we went to our friends, the Copelands, for a special birthday dinner. 

Today is her actual birthday, so I went to her school and ate school lunch with her.  That was so special.  her cute little friends Ally and Sarah got to come and sit by us!  Then after school we went to the library (another one of her favorite places), and then home to open a few more presents from great friends.  Then we ended the night at our friends house, the Matsons.  Their daughter has the same birthday as Brielle so we had a joint Birthday/FHE dinner. 

Overall it was a lot of celebrating and fun.  She is such a special girl and I don't know what I would do without her.  She is the most stubborn and strong willed child we have, but she is also the sweetest and most caring and loving child we have as well.  When I went to eat luch with her at school today, I think I saw every kid in her class ask her if she would sit by them at lunch.  She loves everyone no matter what they wear, or look like, or talk like.  She wants to be everyones friend.  That is one of her best qualities.  She is such a big sprit in a teeny tiny 40 lb. body.  We love her so much! 

Her Cake..Of course it has to be something really girlie with her!  She LOVES ballet and wanted a ballerina cake, I thought she might be disappointed when it was just the slippers, but she loved it!

Loving her brothers and the Barbies they picked out for her!

This is such a sweet picture!

This is the cake that I made for the little girl Sarah who we celebrated their birthdays with!

For REAL!

One of the hardest things in life is to be real.  To just be you no matter who is watching, or who you are talking to or who you are with. It sounds easy, but if you think about it, it is hard to be really you.  We all want to fit in.  That is ingrained in us since childhood.  We all want to have the most friends or to look the cutest, or to have the nicest house or the best kids, but is that REAL?  If it is I will never make it.  But I can be myself all the time no matter what my hair looks like and that to me is reality. 

Society is pushed upon us daily, but in the middle of all the outside forces looking on my life I want to always remember that I am a child of God and that is enough.  I don't have to be the best, but I always have to be my best self.  God created me and gave me the things in life to make me happy and if i am always trying to be someone I am not, I will be miserable.  So my new pledge to myself is to ...keep it real.

My friend Toni is pretty real. She really doesn't care about the judgement of others. Alice is pretty real too. She will tell you just like it is. Click on their names to check out their blog posts, and see for yourself.

Kids always keep it real..even when fall down in front of everyone

 

Or when they have a big gap in their teeth and will still give a toothy grin!

 

Or when they have a big scratch on their face with a bandaid on it.

Or when they are just REAL!!

One-derful!

We had such a great time celebrating Adilynn's birthday! She was the best of the kids by far to watch eat the cake, she just dug right in with no hesitation! The kids loved watching her. We just had a little dinner and cake and presents here at home with the family. Simple but sweet. I still can't believe she is one. ~sigh~

The Cake
The Messy birthday girl!

This is what she was doing while I made the cake! She put the "hat" on herself!

Happy Birthday Adilynn!

Today is the day. My baby is one year old today. I really have mixed emotions because I am so happy she is getting more independent and can feed herself and get around, but I am so sad because this is the LAST first birthday I will ever celebrate with one of my kids. We love this little girl so much. She brings me so much joy and happiness, and I can't imagine my life without her. She is my little buddy and I am so grateful for her. I wanted to make a list of things we love about her so she can read it when she is older. So here it goes:

1. She is always happy. She rarely cries and is just able to go with the flow.
2. She can say words like mama, dada, "is it" (meaning where is it?, drink, and binki.
3. She has no fear about things except when it comes to walking, she is kind of a wimp. :)
4. She LOVES to dance, especially when she sees Doug. She always shakes her shoulders for him.
5. Her hair looks so cute in a ponytail on top of her head.
6. When she crawls she drags her left leg under her so she can go faster.
7. She gets into EVERYTHING, and her favorite spot is to climb onto the dishwasher door.
8. She LOVES her brothers and sister. She gets so excited to see them every morning.
9. She goes to sleep so easy, and she sleeps about 12 hours every night!
10. She loves to eat bread. She would eat it for every meal.
11. She only weighs 18 lbs., but she eats more than the boys do! (I guess she has her dads metabolism)
12. She has a little spunk to her and she will scream really loud if it gets too crazy around here so she can be heard.
13. She likes to growl at you and then laughs when you do it back to her.

We are so happy Adilynn came to our family! Happy Birthday little girl! (I will post pictures of the cake and party later!)

the outtakes

Love it!

My kids watch this about 20 times a day! So cute!

Contemplation

So I am writing this post as I sit here in the wee hours of the morning... awake. We have had a sick household and I am sole caretaker of the Fort. It makes things interesting when your husband gets sick. I am sleeping on the couch, not because we are in a fight, but because I don't want to share his germs. So really I am not sleeping much at all. Brielle is sick. She coughs all night long and just cries because she doesn't feel good. This breaks my heart and I wish i could take the sickness away. The other kids are feeling fine but are getting a little neglected between taking care of sick people, washing dishes for hours because we have a broken dishwasher, and mounds of laundry, and it makes me feel guilty.

So as I am sitting here contemplating all of this the Lord has been so kind to remind me that this is why I am here. My purpose in life is to take care of my little family. These are the people who will be with me forever and my relationships with them should be the most important. I can't change the past, but I can decide every day to get a little better. If I only yell at my kids three times today instead of four that is change right?

I have also learned that I have to set realistic expectations for myself. I cant think I will be perfect in one day. It will take this life and the next for that. I can just choose to keep getting better one day at a time. That is what life is about. Enjoy the Journey and progression, and ultimately love. Love is really all we need.

Oh is it 2011 already??

So, I have been planning to update the blog for almost a year now! WHAT? Where did the time go? I have been putting it off forever and since I kept putting it off, I put it off even more because i felt like it would take me forever to catch up. So I am doing one blog for the past 6 months, hope you enjoy!

Things that happened in the past 6 months:

1. In July I had a major surgery (a hysterectomy) and my Mother in law came out to help take care of me and take me and the kids back to Utah.

2. In August we were in Utah visiting our families and enjoying our family reunions for both sides of the family. This included Boondocks (a family fun center), Pineview Dam, Bear Lake, a rousing Minute to Win it tournament won by yours truly, Swimming, family pictures, dinosaur museum and spending time with family and friends. It was a great way to recover.

Brielle also started first grade! And joined a musical theater group called Sonshine!

3. In September Parker FINALLY got rid of his Binki! (or for you Southerners Pacifier) and Benson started his first season of Soccer! He loved playing, he was afraid to run after the ball and he never scored a goal, but he sure had fun!

4. In October Benson turned four and had his preschool friends over for a little party! He asked me to make frog cupcakes, and a Jack and the Beanstalk cake. He Loved it!

We also celebrated Halloween! Between painting pumpkins, parties, and two trunk-or-treats, they had a great time.

5. In November baby Adilynn and I got to go to Spokane Washington so I could get a root canal. While we were there my nephew Will was baptized, so I had a chance to see most of my family for the weekend! It was great! Poor Doug had to deal with a throwing up Parker the whole time I was away... :(
Also in November Doug got a new job! He is now working at Oak Ridge national Laboratory (ORNL). He works in the Real Estate Department doing their real Estate Acquisitions making sure everything is legal. It is a whole new experience but overall has been a good move. We also celebrated Thanksgiving by having a HUGE dinner at our house with a few different families. It was a great way to give Thanks! We also gave thanks that Adilynn started crawling this month!

6. In December we of course just LOVED getting ready for Christmas! It was so magical this year, the kids were so excited about everything and it made it so fun for our family. We did all the baking and gingerbread making and caroling to celebrate the season. Brielle was able to sing a solo in the Christmas musical program in Sacrament meeting and she did so great. It is so fun to see her do something she loves to do, and do it so well! Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were of course wonderful. We had our adopted Grandparents; Don and Wanda and the missionaries over for Christmas Eve dinner, and then on Christmas day we just relaxed and didn't get out of our pajamas all day!

7. January was pretty much a blur. We had a few snow days that kept all the kids home, some of us got sick, we had doctor appts., our dishwasher broke, my tire got a flat and I started exercising. I really am glad to say that January has come and gone.

8. Now it is February. This past weekend we got to go and stay with some of our friends and attend the temple! It was a fun little trip. Next week we get to celebrate Adilynns first birthday! Hopefully I can keep this updated this month and I can fill in the rest of February while it is still here!

Well, that is it. A whole six months in one blog. Our life is pretty exciting right?