It's about that time

I have siblings that live in the neither regions of the land and they send emails to tell us about their weeks. I love these emails. I love to hear the funny things their kids say and hear how their life is going. My sisters that do these emails tell me that they hate doing them because sometimes there's nothing to write about. Sometimes they just live life and their kids just talk like little humans with nothing funny to say. Even on those weeks I tell them they should send the emails. Then I am reminded that me telling them to do that is a little hypocritical because me myself and I hate updating this blog. Obviously, it's been since April. I just feel like we've just been living life. Doing the whole work and school routine. When I think of funny things that kids say, nothing comes to mind. Although the other week I was working out. I try to do it in the wee hours of the morning to get it out of the way however, there are some mornings that the alarm is an abomination so when it goes off, I turn it off and turn away from it. Not wanting to be sucked into it's wicked plan of stealing sleep from me. This happened to be one of those mornings. I was working out while K was eating breakfast. He looked over at the screen and asked,"Were all tv's black and white when you were little?" Insert an image of me shaking my head, rolling my eyes and wheezing out "Nooooo! (pant, pant, pant), "They were all color." His response was one of shock and awe. That's not funny, that's just well, there are no words. He also asked me one time if semi's were invented when I was younger. Hello! it's not like I'm Henry Ford's mother. He must think I had neighbors that had pet dinosaurs and we all lived in caves with a club as our security systems.Good thing we like that kid.

I know the picture is random but he was so happy to see Cosmo. He was shocked that when he saw Cosmo somersault out of his van, no one seemed to notice. He and his friend,"ran over to him so fast so we could get a picture with him. It was so amazing!!" He loves BYU football. Heaven alone knows why. They were bad before and this year has just been total humiliation. K doesn't seem to care. He loves them so much and was over the moon to see Cosmo in real life.

This summer was full of boating. B loves boating. Actually, to say that he loves it is a gross understatement. I wish there was a better word. He loves everything about it. He loves to ski, surf, tube with the kids and be the driver. Here he is showing off that he can be pulled on a tube and not hold on. However, sometimes the laws of Physics prove they are still intact and....

He lands in the water. We all died laughing with this one. If you look close you can see him in the water. Another highlight of this picture? K's face. 

The three older kids learned to water ski this summer. The boys love it and M is learning to. She doesn't want to learn how to do something, she just wants to know how and be good at it. She can get up, she just lets go of the rope really fast. She'll get better and better and love it, B's sure of it! 

This one loves the tube. She gets in the middle seat, will lay down on her back and stick her thumb in the air, the signal to go faster. She loves to,"go super fast" on the tube. She takes a good turn and then will tell you when she's done. If you take her off before she feels like she's had a long enough turn, you'll hear about it. 

When she gets too tired, she'll sit down and go to sleep. She doesn't love the cold water so she either wants to be on the tube or on the boat and if you put her in the water, she screams. Like, SCREAMS!!! It's not great. 

Look how happy this fella is! You guys, I'm telling you, nothing in the world makes him as happy as boating.

I looked through the pictures and I don't have anything else to say. No surprise pregnancy, no funny kid stories, no nothing. We're truly just living life. Which, if I'm being honest, is pretty great. We're healthy and happy and blessed every day. We got family pictures a couple weeks ago but I don't want to put them on here yet because I have a friend working on switching some heads. Meaning, A was smiling in one and not the other. So this amazing friend is trying to take smiling head off of one picture and put it on the other. Anyway, all I'm saying is that I don't have anything to say. Summer was hot and fun and way too short and now we're back to the grind. 

Sometimes family is just another F word

Do you see the people in this picture? These people are my entire world. I would do anything for them. If they needed two new kidney's, I would let them take both of  mine. If they needed a bone marrow transplant, they could have all of mine. They could have the heart from my chest. I'm not trying to be dramatic. I really mean it. My little family deserves way better than me. I'm moody and emotional and am full of OCD and anxiety. When I make them redo the silverware in the dishwasher because my brain tells me the spoons can ONLY go with the other spoons, the forks can ONLY go with the other forks and the knives can ONLY go with the other knives, I try to own my crazy. I say something like, I know I'm crazy, but I really need the silverware to be loaded right or I start to twitch and my brain goes nuts. That's only one of my crazy things. We won't talk about towels or sheets or odd numbers or hangers and how they have to not only be hung in the right direction but they also have to be used in the right order. I know, I'm crazy. There is no denying that. I love the people in this here picture more than life itself. They are my everything and I have told them that when they grow up we will all live on a hill and our houses will go down the hill but be connected by a slide so that we can get to each other's houses as fast as possible. There will be a moving sidewalk at the bottom of our hill to get us back to the top. K has told us his whole life that he is going to build houses for a living. Little B will be his vice president and they are still trying to convince M that she wants to be the interior decorator for them. It all sounds marvelous to me and K is totally excited to build our houses with slides for us.

Read on at your own risk. There will be some people that read this that don't like what I have to say. I'm going to say it anyway. The people in these two pictures are at a close second for my heart space. There are people in both of these groups that I want to scribble out or draw horns on. I am certain that there are people in both of these groups that want to scribble me out or draw horns on me too.  I find it so interesting that I could tell the people in both these groups that they could  have a kidney, as long as my kids don't have both of mine, or they could have a lobe of my liver or any number of body parts; but in the same breath I can say that some of these people make me totally crazy. I have been trying for a year and a half to find forgiveness and move on from something terrible that happened. It didn't even happen to me directly, but it has had a huge impact on my life personally. I have tried to be like the Savior. I have tried to give myself the time it takes to accept that things will never, ever be the same in this life. B and I were talking about things on our date last night and I told him some specific progress I have made and we both agreed that those things were huge steps from where I was even a couple months ago. We were talking about how the progress was made and it was clearly the Savior. I have realized a few things over the last year and a half. The first thing I realized is that everyone needs the Savior. I was thinking of the sin scale, is that even a thing? Probably not, but in my mind, embezzlement is way worse than me sneaking a piece of chocolate, or three, before dinner after telling my kids they have to wait until after we eat. However, in both of those situations, repentance is required and the only person who can do that is the Savior. The repentance process for embezzlement(honestly, I don't even know what that is, I just know it's not a good choice), might be more intense but the Savior would forgive both of us. The quote by then, President Uchtdorf, that says, "don't judge me because I sin differently than you." has been rolling around in my head a lot. We all need the Savior. None of us can make it into heaven without Him. There are things I do everyday that I know I shouldn't. I feel like Christ has every right to tell me enough is enough and that I don't get it. The amazing thing is, that He doesn't. He forgives me every day, so what right do I have to deny someone else forgiveness? Now, don't misunderstand, forgiveness and trust are not the same thing. I can say that I have forgiven, but that does not mean that there is trust again and I don't know if there ever will be total trust. I feel hopeful that I will be able to be around this person again, but I can't say when that time will be and I don't know when I will let our kids be around him. Something else that I have learned is the Christ wasn't always nice. I have been trying to go through this situation and be nice because I wanted to be like Christ. But Christ wasn't always nice. He threw over the table in the temple. He called people hypocrites to their faces. He told his disciples, more than once that they were people of little faith. Fast forward in time to Joseph Smith. It seems like that poor guy was chastised more than he wasn't. Christ was always direct and said what needed to be said. He didn't stand by and silently hope that everything worked out. He didn't beat around the bush. He didn't wait for someone else to say the things that needed to be said. Being silent and complacent is not being Christ like. Of course the biggest difference is that Christ was perfect and so he said things perfectly. Usually I blunder my way through things and I swear when I get really mad. I'm not perfect and in no way am I trying to say that I am. I know that everyone goes through their own process and to expect others to be where I am at or for others to expect me to be where they are at isn't fair. All I'm saying is that the atonement is real. That the Savior can change people and hearts. That family is the only thing that we get to take with us and although there might be people that I want to scribble out and draw horns on today and remind them that right now they're making me feel like they're just another F word, I would still offer them a kidney if I had an extra one lying  around.    

Happy Happy birthday times 2

The beginning of the year is full of birthday's around our house. We love birthday's and try to make them different than any other day. M had her birthday first. Her birthday fell on a Sunday, which in and of itself is disappointing however, it was made even more disappointing because it was also fast Sunday. What rotten luck right? But, she's a champ and didn't seem to mind at all. The Saturday before her birthday, B took her and two of her friends and K skiing for the day.

Clearly her friends are twins. They have been coming over to our house for almost four years and I still can't tell them apart. M thinks they look nothing alike and I feel like the only thing different about them is, um, nothing. Oh wait! Their names are different. That's it. They all had a great time and I am so happy they got to go skiing. 

The next day was M's birthday. I love that she still smells every present she gets. It makes this old lady's heart so happy! She loves smells and has her whole life. If there's a book on the counter, she'll pick it up and fan the pages as she gets really close to it so she can smell the ink. She says she loves the smell of Home Depot and has wished on occasion that her room could smell like that. 

Here are some of her birthday pictures.

I try so hard to be brave and keep a stiff upper lip, which is such a weird saying by the way, but when I think about how fast time goes and that I only get her for a few more years, I fall apart. M is such a sweet mild mannered person. She loves taking care of A and is so willing and happy to do it. It takes a lot to ruffle M's feathers and she's so content no matter what we're doing. She still loves to do back hand springs and is working on a back tuck. She loves to hang out with her friends and loves saving her money so she can buy clothes and shoes. She loves for her room to smell good and has plug in's and a scensty. But, sometimes those two things aren't enough and she sprays the air with her body sprays. She loves for A to smell good too and will spray her with smelly stuff and lather her in lotion any time A will let her. She has one of the best laughs in the world and we love when she laughs really hard.

This little thing turned 2 a few days after M had her birthday. I still have moments, a lot of them, when I think how crazy it is that she's here and part of our family. We are all totally enamored with her and are so so thankful that she came. She is feisty and isn't afraid to tell people when they are doing something she doesn't like or sitting somewhere she wants to sit. She likes to give hugs, sometimes and likes to make people laugh. She is learning to pray and loves when the older kids will help her. Usually once she's done praying she will run get her baby and say "baby prayer too?" She loves her babies, bear and stuffed dog. She loves her blanket and her hooded towel. Here is a picture of something else she loves, but only on Saturday mornings.

When I get her out of the bath, she insists on wearing her hat and once I give it to her, she puts it on and she takes off running around the house. I don't know what it is about Saturday's that make her want to be totally free but she's tiny enough that it's still cute. Until she pees on the floor right?! I don't let her run free for very long and once I catch her I have to wrestle her to get a diaper on her all the while she's screaming telling me that she doesn't want a diaper, she wants to run. Yeah, she's feisty. 

Don't mind the head in the shot. Sheesh! She loved her new babies.

And her little kitchen. Although a few days after her birthday I heard her saying, "mommy! not working. Not working, mommy." I asked her what wasn't working and she said, "a mere" (come here). She took me downstairs where we put her kitchen and she went running over to it. There's a little button on the burner that when you put the pot on it, it will push on the button and make it sound like boiling water. I thought she was going to tell me that the sound had stopped working. Nope, she was trying to turn on the faucet and as she turned the little handle she would say "not working mommy." She likes it anyway and I'm eternally thankful that there's no running water in her little kitchen.

I don't know if she was more excited about the cookie or the candles.

Also, she loved the new babies she got, but she REALLY loves the binkies that came with the babies. 

We have her birthday pictures but this computer is so annoying and I have no idea where the pictures are at. I labeled the file, A's birthday pictures, so I should be able to find them. No such luck. I'm sure this has nothing to do with operational error. Stupid computer. A is still tiny. She weighs 20 ponds as long as you weigh her after she's eaten. She doesn't like meat and won't eat it. She doesn't like leftovers, even if it's something she likes. The only exception is Mac and Cheese. She calls it pasta and will tell you almost every day that she wants pasta. She'll eat the leftovers of mac and cheese until the entire box is gone. She loves cereal, pancakes and fruit snacks. She loves potatoes and gravy but not baked potatoes. She LOVES chocolate but because of her peanut and tree nut allergies, she can't have a lot of it. However, she can have Dove plain chocolate and Cadbury eggs and will come running if you offer them to her. She loves suckers and applesauce. She likes yogurt as long as you let her feed herself which is fine unless she has a gogurt and squeezes it out every where and paints with it. Then it's just really annoying.

We truly love these two ladies that are ours and are thankful every day that they are stuck with us for eternity!