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?

Our Spaghetti Sauce!!!

Doug and I decided that it would be fun to put our HUNDREDS of tomatoes to good use so we made our own spaghetti sauce and canned it! It was so much fun, we were up until 1:00 in the morning doing it, and we took pictures to document the process! It was not the most cost effective thing to do, but we loved doing it together!



First step it to peel the skin off the tomatoes and then squish them with your hands to get the seeds and water out. Then we diced all of the other ingredients that went into the sauce.



This is a picture of the spices and yummy veggies we added.

Then we combined the tomatoes with the spices and let it simmer for about an hour!

Then we went through the canning process. Our friend let us borrow her pressure canner and it is really fun to use. This was the end result! Doesn't that look yummy?

Conversation with Benson

This is the conversation Benson and I had the other morning.

Mom: Benson what do you want to be when you grow up?

Benson: I really think I want to be a dad.

Mom: Well, how many kids do yo want to have.

Benson: I am going to have one hundred kids!! (thinking for a minute)... And I think that I will have to drive a bus to drive all my kids around!

Mom: WOW! That is a lot of kids are you sure you want one hundred kids

Benson: (Thinking again)... Well, maybe I will just have four kids, then I don't have to drive a bus!

Another masterpiece

Here is another one of Brielle's GREAT masterpieces. It is called "the little lamb." She is going to make it someday!