Girlie Time

Now that the men of the house went back to school us girls lay around the house all day anticipating their return.

Ok perhaps that's only how we feel on the inside.

Over the last week the girlies and I have:

-made a chain to count down when Olivia gets to start preschool

(not till October so it was a super long chain!)

-visited the library (where we may have cleared the princess section)

-Read princess stories every afternoon

-dressed in tutus and sponge curlers

-fed the ducks

-gone swimming

-baked, oh my have we baked!!!!!!

-and our fav....dance parties.

(We reccomend the Tangled Soundtrack and Justin Beiber station on Pandora)

These are the only pics I have since we really were too busy havn fun!

Its true.

Girls just wanna have fun.

Letting Go

9 months of morning sickness

5 months of colic

13 months of waking every 2hrs for a feeding

18 months of walking the halls at church

3 months of potty training

Who knew the hardest thing would be letting you go?

Kolby's first day of kindergarten.

He could harldy contain his excitement!

I could hardly contain my sense of loss.

8:10-3:10 never felt so long.

I held it together pretty well.

Figured I'd cried myself to sleep enough the last 3 months.

I put on my brave face.

Until I wrote this post that is...

dang it.

lump in the throat.

Oh motherhood, you are constantly schooling me.

So Long Summer

So long

lazy days

night swims

snuggle mornings

evenings of ice cream after the park

constant load of towels in the dryer

non-existent alarm clock

complete discretion of our days events

having my babies all home

seeing my hubby

Summer

perhaps I can close my eyes and tomorrow will never come:)

Sowing

Its not a typo. If I ever have a post about me "sewing" you'll know some thing's terribly wrong. Hemming Kolby's pants with duct tape is just about the closest thing I've come to sewing. I digress. This post is about sowing.

Several months ago I was contemplating all the things I've been able to teach my children. I had a blast teaching them their colors and shapes, numbers and letters, science and math. But deep inside I wondered if I had taught them the things that were most important? Had I taught them to be kind? How to make friends? How to forgive? How to stand up for what's right? Had I taught them to be like the Savior? I had a feeling of urgency this summer to arm my children with the attributes they needed to go out into the world. And here is what happened:

Inspiration: "will i want to be the person I've become when all is said and done?" -Katherine Nelson "You are more than what you have become." -The Lion King

"The final Judgement is not just an evaluation of a sum total of good and evil acts and thoughts- what we have DONE. It is an acknowledgement of the final effect of our act and thoughts- what we have BECOME."

"The Gospel of Jesus Christ is a plan that shows us how to become what our Heavenly Father desires us to become." - D. Todd Christofferson

"The desires we act on determine our changing, our achieving, and our becoming." "When we have a vision of what we can become our desire and our power to act increase enormously." -Dallin H. Oaks

Study: This profound talk: http://lds.org/general-conference/2011/04/what-manner-of-men-and-women-ought-ye-to-be?lang=eng&query=manner+men+women+ought

Action:

I found this great program online (many thanks to my amazing sis-in-law Ale). http://www.valuesparenting.com/ They are members of the church and created the Joyschool program. I just do the monthly value and FHE lessons. You can do most of that stuff for free. A generous donor paid my $50 membership fee. I'm all about keepn it real though. I don't spend hours and hours doing stuff.

1.I read through the website. 2.We made our own family rules/chart which hangs by the dinner table to remind us to discuss our rules and values. (Order=cleaning your room, Peace= no fighting, Obedience= responding with a "yes ma'am" or "yes sir" when asked to do something) 3.The 1st FHE of each month we introduce the theme and do an activity/lesson from the family night section on the website. 4.We also ask the kids each night at the dinner table or before they go to bed to share a time when they were honest or had courage or whatever we are learning about. (this month has been fun because I happened to have a bag of stones from a previous FHE lesson on David and Goliath. I painted the word courage on it. Now each night, whoever shares their moment of courage gets to sleep with the courage stone in their room...simple and cheap yet so effective:) 5.I have a book called The Children's Book of Virtues. I like to pull quick stories or poems that correlate with the monthly value from there for our bedtime stories. 6. I also try to choose scripture stories that teach the value as well for our nightly scripture reading. Basically if you're already doing FHE, bedtime stories, and scripture reading it's NOT extra work, it's just all cleverly organized for you:) and I definitely supplement with my own stuff too. I think it just helps me focus and reminds me to keep teaching a value over and over and over in fun ways. I love hearing my kids exclaim, "Mom I had courage today!"

Can't wait to see the seeds we're sowing:)

{Summer} Reads

If you consider May as summer than here are some of my summer reads.

A bunch of these were part of book club so 2 were repeats from last summer.

I thoroughly enjoyed each of them.

Jeanette Walls is absolutely fabulous!

For book club we ate brisket and beans.

fav from last summer too!

For book club we ate pies of course.

Can't wait to see the movie this week!

C.S. Lewis, you never cease to amaze me.

Another repeater...we actually had the author join us for ice cream sundaes!

This was a goodie as well. Sure wish one of the "select theatres" it's playing in was by my house!

We won't be reading this til next year's book club but i just could resist...Mmmmmm this book was so delicious! Seriously it made me start cooking again. Now if only I could afford a cooking class!

and this book...I've just started. It kinda gives me nightmares and eerie chills. Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. ha!

what did you read this summer?

Forgiveness

I picked up my 4yr old from Sunbeams on Sunday to be greeted with knowing smiles from her teachers and a card from my daughter. I thought nothing of it.

As I packed my bags in primary Olivia tells me, "Mommy I love you THIS much!" and holds her hands about 12 inches apart. I smiled thinking, oh how sweet, and wanting to play her game told her, "I love you THIS much!" and stretched my arms as far as I could.

Then Olivia tells me, "Mommy, I only love you medium because sometimes you're mean to me."

I was slightly crushed to say the least and asked, "when am I mean to you?"

She explained that I'm mean to her when I yell at her when she makes bad choices. I told her that's not being mean that's being a parent and trying to help her make better choices.

Then I noticed the hand-crafted necklace she was wearing. It read, "I can be like Jesus and forgive others".

Suddenly the pieces started coming together.

I asked my 4 yr old if they learned about forgiving people who are mean to them and if she told her class that i was mean to her and if they were to color pictures for the person they were forgiving for being mean to them.

To my utter horror she answered yes to all of the above.

nice.

I swallowed back 2 tears and declared it a bad day to be a mom.

Then it was time for forgiveness.

Perhaps its easier to be forgiving though when you're wearing a neon necklace with a picture of Jesus on it.

Our 1st 5k

Holly and I are surrounded by runners.

After a while I was curious what the big deal was.

I decided I wanted to run a 5k before I turned 30.

Lucky for me I can check it off my list as of yesterday.

And all before I even turn 29!

cheers to us!

Holly's the best running partner ever!

Lookn forward to another in October.

Hopefully the weather will be slightly kinder.

As in below 100 degress and 100% humidity.

I'm just say'n.

Nothing's Sweeter Than...

Nothing's sweeter than...

3 giggles in the tub,

the soft scent of lavendar lotion,

snuggles with a favorite bunny book,

singing primary songs,

seeing all 3 of my children fold their arms for prayers.

Love it when bedtime is the sweetest part of the day.

{Beauty} is in the eye of the beholder

Last weekend Beauty (or Belle) from Beauty and the Beast came to visit my niece's birthday party. The girls were ecstatic. Kolby, not so much. He told me later he was super brave and took a picture with her as long as wouldn't have to sit on her lap.

I'm thinkn in just a few short years he may have a different view about being at party full of pretty princesses:)

My secret vice

I decided to start running for the first time in my life.

I went from never-ever -ever running more than 1 mile to running 3 miles 3 times a week.

I'm on week 8 now.

My professional-runner-hubby wrote me a program.

I follow it "loosely" heehee.

Honestly I hate running. I'm always happy when its over.

Honestly I hate when everyone finds out I'm not a runner and looks at me like why would your husband want to marry you. (Yes, this actually happens)

Honestly I'm extremely intimidated by every freakn' in-law that runs marathons and triathlons. I really don't want them to see me or my times ever!

Honestly here are the reasons I run:

1. I can no longer afford the gym I went to 2 years ago

2. I haven't exercised in 2 years and thought I should probably be able to climb my stairs while hold a sleeping child without feeling like I'm gonna die.

3. I wanted to prove to myself and others that it was possible.

4. The best reason: I absolutely love the completely guilt-free alone time it guarantees me.

One strange thing... I refuse to run with actual runners. My run is no longer a stress reliever if I gotta stress over my pace being too slow or my breathing being too hard or if my form is crappy. Trust me I live with a runner. I know how their little minds work.

Ok and perhaps the strangest thing of all...

Honestly I have a secret vice that helps me run.

So I don't run with people. I ran with some jack rabbits in AZ, some frogs in TX, but the one person I absolutely MUST run with?

What can I say?

Eminem makes me feel invincible.

Who knew?

NO worries mom, its fully edited.

Have any secret vices in your life?