{My Valentine's}

I made the kids stay in their Sunday clothes to take pictures - first shot I've EVER gotten of all three smiling simultaneously pre-photoshop. Hurray! It CAN be done!

We had a fun night with the kids - they didn't really care for the steak and lobster, but the root beer and strawberry milk is always a hit (the awesome glass bottles it comes in is a nice bonus, too.). Just so you don't get too jealous, the meat left something to be desired. I hate it when that happens -- I keep thinking I'm going to figure out how to cook one of these days, but expensive fancy foods are still beyond me (in spite of my brother-in-law's efforts to educate me.). At least the pictures look good. And thank you, Marie Callendar for the pie - I know how to do that! :)

I hope you had some good lovin' on Valentine's day this year!!

My Peeps

A couple days ago, J-boy informed me that his underpants have a sideways pocket in the front. Later that same day he was happy to report that he'd actually gone pee through his sideways pocket. We're hopeful that this might encourage him to wear his underpants frontwards - he's struggled with this, due to his love of the pictures that are inevitably printed on the bum.

A few weeks ago we celebrated our states' birthday. K-lady dutifully studied the state flower, bird, reptile, flag, etc. in her kindergarten class. She was telling me about it after school one day, and said, "Mom, do you already know all this stuff?" I told her I'd known about the flower, but the box turtle and buffalo were news to me. She quickly replied, "Well, maybe you should go back to kindergarten." I had really hoped we wouldn't hit this stage until middle school at the earliest.

As for Adorable A, I don't even recognize her these days. Where did this baby come from? She's squirming all over the place, cutting her 2nd tooth, and bossy as can be. Can that possibly be the same sweet baby we brought home from the hospital? Was it really 6 1/2 months ago?!

We do have exciting news in the adult department of the family, too: We'll be heading off to THE Ohio State University in June for Joseph to complete a year long residency program. The most exciting part of this (for me - I don't get as excited about third molar extraction and I-V sedation) is that I get to live near my fabulous sister & her family!! It was a tough decision - not Joseph's first choice in residency programs, but it will give us the most access to future possibilities in residencies/practices/etc. So we're off to become Buckeyes (I think our current mascot is a kangaroo - I don't really know if that's an upgrade or a demotion, but I'll take it either way). :)

Sweet Doodling

This is what K did during Sacrament meeting at church today. I play the organ, Joseph juggles Baby A and J-boy, so K is usually left to her own devices. Today she brought a pad of paper and wrote little notes over in her corner of the pew. I loved reading this after church! Please forgive her spelling - the English language really doesn't make any sense at all. We're still trying to understand the 'silent e.' :)

Transcription: I like home. It is the best place. I play with my family. I like my family. My family takes care of me. My families are the best.

Of course, the tallest girl with the crown is me (the queen mother), I'm guessing Baby A is the little one with the crown, and K has curls. J-boy and Daddy have spikey hair.

What a sweetheart!

Happy Birthday to {ME!}

A couple weeks ago we celebrated my 29th birthday. And because I have a fantastic husband, it was a great day. Let me set the stage -- we'd gotten home from our wonderful trip, and it took a couple weeks to feel like I was back on top of laundry, groceries, routine, etc. So I was saving up all these fun projects for the weekend before my birthday, but I got sick instead. Just some kind of sore throat, fever, virus kind of thing, but it wiped me out for a couple days. I was so MAD! I'd worked really hard catching up on 'chores' so I could do FUN work. So when I thought about my birthday coming up, I told Joseph that I just wanted a day. A day all to myself, no meals to cook, no children to dress, no messes to clean, no errands to run.
It was MAGICAL! Of course, I still had Baby A (she's a little to young to play at the indoor pool all day), but she was pretty aimiable. I pulled out all the projects I'd been saving up for weeks (months?) and felt so good. 

I was actually kind of surprised at how good I felt!  As I worked my way through my projects, I began thinking in terms of my computer.  Now, let me tell you first of all, I am not a techie, so if I get my terms wrong and you know better, just bear with me or quit reading now.  :)  I was likening myself to the CPU (the central processing unit).  I think moms (and women in general) are like CPU's -- we run the processes, and we keep things going.  The more processes I've got running, the less efficient I am.  And sometimes when I've got too many processes going on, I just crash (and occasionally loose data!).  So on my birthday, I was running the 'fun project'  process.  But usually I've got at least a half dozen other processes running simultaneously -- first of all the 'K-girl' process, the 'J-boy' process, the 'breakfast/lunch/dinner' process, the 'goodness this house is a wreck' process.  Toss a few others on there (husband, church, school, friend, blog...), and then there's the 'guilt' process (for doing a non-essential thing when there are so many essentials that really should take precedence).  

Well, Happy Birthday to me!   'Cause the 'fun project' process and the 'Baby A' process were the only things running ALL DAY and even into the night.  My wonderful husband brought me lunch at 12:30 - YUMMY Chicken Bacon Dijon grilled sandwich from Panera Bread - and then he brought dinner at 6:00 - serious comfort food in the form of Baked Potato Soup with Sourdough Bread.  Did I mention that neither of these meals required any dishes to be washed?  He took the children to the gym with him, then took them swimming at the community center for hours.  Then he ran errands with them as I peacefully project-ed my way through the day.  It was so wonderful to do things I enjoy in my own home without multi-tasking myself  to death.

So for my birthday this year, I got: Take-out lunch and dinner, two vinyl lettering phrases for my walls, one sign for my front porch, one sign for my MIL, one memoir organizing binder and 3 little notebooks for taking along with me so I'll never again forget that cute thing my kids' said, Baby A's taggie and I cut the pieces out for the little Molly Monkey up there in the picture.  She was actually sewn together last week.  

Oh, and the ones I love did make a cameo -- Joseph, the kids and I enjoyed cake (my wonderful visiting teacher made for me) together around 7:30 just before Joseph put the kids to bed.  

BEST. BIRTHDAY. EVER.

Thanks, Joseph, for pampering me with a day.  I love you!

Christmas 2008

So, I was going to just cut my losses and move on with life -- after all, it's February, and I thought to myself, I'd really rather blog what's going on RIGHT NOW than try to remember what happened nearly 2 months ago! But I started looking at pictures, and I couldn't stop, and I'm horribly perfectionistic, and I just can't shake it, so here it is, in all it's glory - pictures of our trip to Utah for Christmas. Between all the siblings and their cameras, we came home with over 1,000 pictures - I just picked my favorite 100 to share! (so ridiculous! I am so grateful for fast picasa collages!)  
We had such a fantastic time -- usually at the end of a long vacation I'm ready to get home and get back to work, but this time around I could have stayed forever. In fact, we got home, walked in, and I wanted to turn right around and race back to the airport. It felt like the stress had been bottled up, preserved in our little apartment. Opening the door was like breaking the seal, and I could almost feel a physical weight pressing down on my shoulders. A few days later life was fine again - the sparkling memory of vacation was starting to fade.
My favorite moments? Singing around the piano, making J-boy's Christmas bow and arrow with my dad in the shop Christmas Eve, shopping with mom (even grocery shopping was fun! Wow!), playing silly games late into the night, holding Baby A ALL THE TIME just because I could, watching my kids laugh and play and run and dance, ice skating with Joseph & K & J-boy, eating Eric's very yummy food, eating Great Grandma B's very yummy cookies, eating Aunt Phyllis' very yummy cookies (good thing I got sick and lost a few pounds the next week!), LAUGHING HARD EVERY DAY, meeting my newest nephew and the first grand-dog in the family :), and seeing my sweet little neice for the second time ever, going to the movies with my fantastic husband, going skiing with sisters and brothers and husband and daughter (K's first time on skiis!) while my angel mom watched a very needy Baby A, playing games and catching up with Joseph's brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc, visiting Temple Square in Salt Lake City with our family (sorry, forgot the camera), watching the snow fall and fall and fall, chatting with some of my most favorite people in the entire world.
I left Utah so grateful for my family! I cannot think of anyone I'd rather belong to than my fantastic parents, siblings, and in-laws. It was the perfect way to spend the holiday - in places I love with people I love. I have got to be one of the luckiest people on earth.

A Little More Christmas

Still MORE Christmas!