Love

This past summer, as we're driving from Cedar City to Idaho Falls, my brother Michael and I decide to take a pit stop at the Salt Lake Temple Square.  In my head pops the image of my children walking reverently, pondering all the quotes and reading material at each site, singing or humming as we leisurely stroll from place to place, and of course, singing in harmony the song "I Love to See the Temple" when we reach the temple doors.  Oh reality, how I love thee.

Here are a couple photos, that seem to appear that yes, my children were calm, loving, and kind to others, especially their siblings.  And really, I could leave it at that.

But the real low down.  I of course, forgot my stroller.  So we were walking.  Strike one.

Strike two.  It was about 4:30pm when we hit Temple Square.  Did I have a sack full of goodies or dinner?  No. 

And strike three.  I was tired from driving.  Oh so tired.

BUT.  We did enjoy our few hours there, and I think we all felt the spirit when we listened to the recording at the Christus inside the visitor's center.  And the kids were awed at how HUGE the temple was, and how they made it with their hands and no big machines like we have now.

We did get to see the Joseph Smith movie (missed the first 20 minutes of the movie, which, if you didn't know the story, pretty pivotal...but we explained) and the kids were all still through that, and I think they have a greater appreciation for Joseph Smith and his sacrifices.  (Liam was shouting a few questions to me when it was pretty quiet on screen, like "Is he dead?"  "Are there dinosaurs in this movie?")

And luckily I had a few Odwalla bars in my purse to pull us through to McDonalds (and a few starlight mints I'd collected from Sonic and thrown in my purse--who knew those would be so handy!)

Since then, the kids and I have talked about how fun that little trip was, and how neat it was to see where the prophet works, and all the other sights.

It was a great seed planted in my children's testimonies, and we all want to go back with Daddy and stay a little longer.

Minus the tantrum on the grass in front of the crowd....

and in the museum.

With more food.

And a stroller.

And Mommy more rested.

All together as an eternal family trying to do the best we know how.

A New Day

Wow, lots has happened! We've moved into a nice cozy little rental, which I love. We've got a lot of our stuff in boxes in the garage (in anticipation of another move into a bigger place), so just the basics in the house, and I think that's why I love it. It's so refreshing not to be bogged down by a lot of "stuff." I told Josh after a couple months of this, I might just throw away half the boxes of stuff out there. His eyes lit right up!

We've had a whirlwind of a summer, and it shouldn't be over yet. So it's not. We're not going to start school until next week, even though co-op starts up this week. We need some time to just relax, enjoy, and be lazy. Did I say we? I meant me. While Josh has plugged away at work, I've been driving to Idaho, Southern Utah, back to Idaho, packing, moving stuff. It's been great to have family to visit and the means to do so--what a blessing.

I had a visit from my sister Rose and family, and then we drove over there and visited them. My littlest brother left for his mission this summer (to Scotland-Ireland). My J sisters and Mom J and I went on a fun little weekend known as The Appleseed Project (more to come on that later).

I also had a little surprise visit from my dear BFF Teesha, and we played games, went to the science center, and did I mention I schooled her in Phase 10?? She's so much fun, I keep trying to talk her and her family into moving next door to us. I don't know why she doesn't want to leave SoCal...

Then my dear friends and family who helped us pull together a move in record time, my heart is full of gratitude to you all for helping me pack, clean, watch kids, bring food, move, unpack... I'm so so thankful for each one of you. SO grateful. We're becoming a bit nomadic it seems, but at least we're not living in a tent, right?

All in all it's been an exhaustingly happy summer, and now it's time to get serious again about tending to all my grown up responsibilities. You know, like blogging. ;)

Updating

Since it's 1am and I'm posting on my blog, that's never a good sign. You never know WHAT will come out of my mouth.

I'll start back in March, we went on a weekend getaway with two other couples, staying at a 3rd couples house, making 4 ADULT couples together. If our kids would've been there, it would've added I think 17 kids to the mix? But the kids were with Grandma and Grandpa, and Josh and I were able to sleep in, go to a "grown ups" concert, and be pampered and spoiled by Karen and her killer hosting skills and food. It was great, we were/are all friends from college, and it was fun and sometimes crazy to reminisce about the old days. Wow, crazy to think it was so long ago, but I have to say we all look exactly the same!!! Thank you guys for the great time! I wish we could do it every month.

The whole weekend, and maybe 8 cameras (including phone cameras), and no pictures were taken as far as I know. So this one is as close as I could get:

new mommy

My littlest sister had her baby a few weeks ago--yay congratulations!!!....and as much as I dislike this photo of me, it's the only one with my eyes not doing the funky half shut thingy I do with most photos. Of course, Amber looks great. So stare at her. She had her little baby girl, Kambrie, and has entered that zombie-like state known as "mother of a newborn". Poor poor Amber. Just seeing her posts on Facebook make me cringe at the thought of doing it all over again. And I'm not saying I am, so please, no announcements here. Just remembering the late nights, early mornings, surviving on 3 hours of sleep or so sometimes...If I lived closer, I'd do the nighttime bottle feedings for Amber though. Did you know Cheers comes on at 2am? That's a great show! While I was up for nights on end with Aria, or maybe it was Liam as a newborn, I watched about 3 seasons of "24" in mere days.
Those were the times! Now I can barely cram in a half hour of good tv in my day.
Funny thing is, time does fly, and even though the nights were long and tiresome, I do miss that sweet cuddly stage, where baby would snuggle all night long in my arms, they'd sleep anywhere and through anything, they looked like they were thinking thoughts of heaven, and smelled so wonderful.... I may just have to head to Amber's for a baby fix... :)

liam's a year older!

Can you believe my little boy is three now?! I feel like Foghorn Leghorn sayin, "Well, I say, I say, I can't believe it." (I miss Looney Tunes)I let him pick out his own cake flavor and frosting. Guess what. Chocolate, with chocolate. He LOVES chocolate. I like to think that's from his mother.

We went roller skating, which may not have been his idea, but do you know how hard it is to find a REAL running train in the middle of January in this area? Besides the Amtrak that costs an arm and a leg? He loved skating, especially the green slushy he got towards the end. Yum...pure sugar.

The skating place was great, you can bring a stroller right out on the floor, so the three big kids got skates with Dad, and I got to keep my shoes on and push Aria around in the stroller. Ended up being me pushing the stroller, Ammon and Liam on each side holding on for dear life, Shayla sitting IN the stroller after she smashed her finger and refused to go on, and Aria just maxin and relaxin.

Liam is SUCH a fun kid to be around. His little raspy voice telling me interesting tidbits of info all day...like the location of every garbage truck in his visual field, as well as any bobtail (a semitruck without a trailer), stories of dinosaurs stealing his socks and shoes, how Lightning McQueen can do anything, and the best are the hugs and "I love you's" all day long. Happy birthday little Liam!

winter mischief

Look at this girl. Does she love her Nesquik or what? Someone gave Aria the container, which thank goodness, was down to the last bit, and she just went crazy. When I say someone, I mean Liam. He of course, denied having any part of it, even with chocolate hands, face, and the tell-tale line of chocolate powder across his forehead.

I did get it on video too. Even Liam's denials of involvement are recorded forever, so I can bring it up when he's older, and it will be much more hilarious-er.

Shayla sporting the sunglasses we got from Jonathan and Lisa for Christmas. When Josh and I went to Texas for his training a looooong time ago, we brought back some souvenirs...Texas shaped sunglasses for Jonathan and Lisa. So now we get these beauties from them. Love em.
There were also some snowflakes, but the picture was all blurry. Dang camera.

Our primary had a gymnastic activity that Liam really loved. Ammon and Shayla got to go and be with the big kids, and Liam jumped in the foam pit with Josh and Aria. Daredevils!

Here is that snow photo of Liam that got bumped off the last post. Isn't he the cutest?? He LOVES those bear mittens. He needs help slipping them on, and I'd try and get the thumb spot to line up with his thumb, but he didn't have time for such nonsense! I love it. A boy who knows what's important in life.

snowfall

We finally had snowfall for a day or so, and the kids were eager to get out and enjoy it, for about ten minutes or so... Even Aria was busting out the door to check it out. Ok, so she's not wearing a matching outfit, but hey. When the snow sticks for about 20 hours at a time, it's just not worth it to me to buy the whole snow ensemble.

My boy who is always sweating and hot...refused to zip up his coat. He shortly fell ill after this photo was taken. (not really, but I tried to scare him with the thought...)

Miss Photogenic paused just long enough for me to snap a picture, after which she ran to the neighbor girl's house, left all her snow stuff on the front step, and played Wii in the warm house. She sure looked cute though! I love that hat. I wish it would snow more just so she could wear it.

Liam's snow picture ended up on a different post...not sure how that happened, but since I'm on Josh's laptop and it's middle of the night, we'll let sleeping dogs lie. I just spent about 2 hours trying to figure out how to webhost (don't even really know what that is) so I could add some fancy fonts to my blog, and then noticed that they already have some fancy stuff on here... Dang.

christmas joys

(We took pictures with our "new" camera from Ezra and Michelle, but don't have the usb cord yet, so no pictures...boring I know!)
We spent Christmas day with Josh's parents and family, and it was of course, SUPER! It was in Grandma and Grandpa's new house, and the cousins had a fun time exploring all the corners inside and out. I love that my kids have so many cousins close to their age, and that they get to see them all the time. I remember growing up with two cousins we saw pretty often, David and Danny, and I have some pretty fun memories of things we did, and trouble we got into.



Our Christmas morning was a fun one, I think it was Shayla that got up first...maybe around 7:30am (niiiicccee!!) and we just played with the toys Santa brought. She loved her boy barbie (I called him Ken, she said that was NOT his name. My bad.) Liam loved his garbage truck, and Ammon..well..Ammon got an alarm clock WITH a radio AND double alarms AND a weather predictor. If any of you know Ammon, you KNOW he was in 7th heaven. He even wanted to keep the cardboard box it came in to organize whatever...and what can I say..the pack rat in me said yes.



What a peaceful, happy and blessed Christmas we all enjoyed this year. To have my children and husband healthy and close to me is one of the greatest gifts really, one I appreciate more and more as I see families with very sick children and husbands who are gone a lot, or gone for good. We read the Christmas story from Luke Chapter 2 on Christmas day, as we were all sitting on the floor with our new treasures, and it was just the sweetest feeling to know that we were sharing our testimonies of our Savior with our children, and really, isn't that the best gift to share on Christmas? ;)

christmas is coming (ok, gone, but I'm slow)

Before we left Grandma's and Grandpa's for Thanksgiving, Grandma was kind enough to set up her little Christmas tree, and let the kids decorate it to get in the spirit of things.

Courtney enjoyed decorating the tree with Karlie and Liam. They had it all set up in just a little bit, laden with big ornaments and candy canes. Mysteriously though, there were only a few candy canes left after the grandkids departed. Dad finally asked me: Does Liam not like candy canes? Me: yeah, he likes em. Why? Dad: Well, he keeps on breaking them, and then throwing them in the garbage.

Oh man! So I ask Liam why he's throwing candy canes in the garbage. He runs to the garbage, pulls one out and holds it up saying, "Look Mom, they're yucky! They have plastic on dem." Oh! So he was trying to break them out of the plastic, couldn't do it, and decided they weren't worth his time and trashed them. I guess I owe Grandma a few candy canes... But honestly, if this keeps him from hopping up on sugar...not sure I want to change his train of thought here..

snow fight!!

As we were getting ready to leave my parents' house, a snow ball fight broke out, and that was the most spontaneous and hilarious fun ever! Ammon and Katelynn were nailing Uncle Matt every time, usually in the tushie, and Liam would work SO hard on his snowball and then walk up and point blank nail Uncle Matt in the knee or leg, then pump his arms and yell, "Yes! I did it!" and run away and start over.

It pretty much ended up everyone against Uncle Matt, and he was such a great sport about it all, I was laughing SO hard I was tearing up. I think you can tell from the pictures, those kids were out for blood!!

It really helped lighten the mood of things, as we were all sad to leave each other for awhile. Ammon and Liam built a snowman with Matt that was rockin, and oh Liam again, was SO proud!

We had a great time out at the homestead, the cousins played all day and into the night (they all slept downstairs too, so Aria, Josh and I had our own room upstairs!), we chatted, played games, watched movies, rubbed Amber's pregnant belly (she's the cutest pregnant woman you ever did see), and just enjoyed. Love it!