Claire's homemade doll

Claire has been wanting to make a doll for a long time and we finally finished it this weekend. It was a pretty quick little project and Claire is in love with "Nellie". 

I've been robbed.

I needed this quote today: 

Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he’s been robbed. The fact is that most putts don’t drop, most beef is tough, most children grow up to just be people, most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration, most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. Life is like an old time rail journey…delays…sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling burst of speed. The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride.

Gordon B. Hinckley

Claire's pink team

Claire was on another basketball team again this year but with all her friends so it was much more fun. They even got to wear pink for the games. 

She did great this year! She is getting really good at handling the ball and being aggressive. We were really proud of her growth in her skills this year. 

Love day 2014

Just realized I had a picture of each of my loves on love day so I thought I would share. Those kids are my joy. Didn't get a picture of my valentine though which is funny. But he was there and we had a nice quiet valentines together. 

We made heart pancakes for breakfast, I went and helped with Claire and Jakes school parties. Chris took me out to lunch and Sam tagged along. We got yummy cupcakes afterwards. 

Then I finished up the kids traditional big heart cookies. 

I also got a cute heart backdrop that Sam helped me try out. 

 

Today

I thought I'd write on the old neglected blog. The kids are changing and growing so fast I can't keep up with it. I've completely worn myself out with taking on too much and I am dreaming of the holidays to be here. I've been watching Christmas movies non-stop as I've been editing and sewing and bedazzling. The pageant is next weekend! I feel so unprepared, yet I am so ready for this to get here. I have been stressing and working so hard, and my poor family has supported me through all of the neglect. I hope that my all is enough, and I can be happy with the outcome. We cut Sam's binky tonight--his bidoo he calls it. I cried. Where did my baby go??? It was as if someone just took my baby away tonight and handed me a man child, though he still looked completely adorable in his big fuzzy sleeper pjs. But he's just so large and everyone is having or just had a baby. Mine will be two. I can't believe how long we've lived in our house, we were reminiscing about Jake as a 2 year old in this house. He is now five. Worlds of difference. Hes so smart, and cool. He's pretty much cooler than I ever hoped to be. He kind of just does what he wants, that's probably bad to admit, but I love it about him. I'm mean he's still a good boy, but he knows what he wants and he does it. This definitely means he doesn't think things through but what 5 year old boy really does? I just love him, he's sweet, we wants me to snuggle him at bed time. He's started getting worried about things, like going out to the bus stop because he's afraid of the wind. So funny. And he does flips off the side of the pool. He's going to crack his head open, but so dang cool! And then there's Claire. Oh she's so old. She has really found her love for reading and pours over the pages of her books. I will soon have an 8 year old, getting baptized. She has such a sweet little testimony. She bore her first testimony in Sacrament meeting in October. I can't express the joy of that. It was simple and honest and sincere. Perfect. She was making me laugh tonight because she loves to text me from the ipod, and she talks about the funniest things. Tonight it was "so what's on your Christmas list". What a conversationalist--love it. I told her I wanted something for my camera and she texted me back a "cameraaaa frowny face" and a picture of Gru from Despicable me frowning. I don't know how she knows how to text pictures, but whatev it was so cute. Tonight I snapped a picture of the children huddled around daddy, watching scripture videos for scripture time. I love that he's so diligent about teaching them the gospel. Even Sam was up there watching and being reverent. I hope they always remember that. I have learned so many hard life lessons lately it seems. The biggest one being that I can't do everything I want all at the same time. That was kind of my dare for the year, see how much I can do. Don't ask me why. Maybe it's an "I'm 29 about to turn 30 and I can't stop this life from going way too fast" kind of a thing. I'm so burnt out. But I've also learned that I can dig deep. When I feel like giving up, I just dig a little deeper and keep going. I'm proud of myself for that. Most importantly I think I've learned that my kids are little investments. What I put in, I get out, sometimes even doubling tripling my investment, so I need to make large and quality investments. All these extracurricular are well and good but I need to stop dinking around. They need more time from me. I think that has been the hardest part of being a mom for me is giving of my whole self to them. I'm afraid that I might get lost. I feel like I haven't even experienced life yet, what do I even have to pass on? But really that's the myth of life, its too fast, and really the only valuable thing to do with your time is invest it in others. My brain hurts from all this thinking. I guess that's the best thing I've gotten out of the pageant thing so far. My "platform" is investing in our children through their education in school and at home. So I've been thinking a lot about this. What my children learn is up to me and there are plenty of negative things they will and have already learned, so it's up to me to fill them up with the good stuff. I've been thinking about homeschooling. I don't know if I could ever do it, but it's this little thought that's been floating around in my head for awhile. I am so pleased with their teachers this year, but maybe when that changes I will reevaluate. This whole job hunting thing is exhausting. I feel like the future is so up in the air. We got an offer for what seemed like the perfect job in Charlotte and for whatever reason it wasn't and I'm trying to just have some serious blind faith because if I don't I might go crazy. Our place is here for now. I really do feel so blessed.

Yellowstone 2013

What a fun trip! I was pretty bummed because we had planned to do our final camping trip of the year up at Yellowstone, but it was too dang cold! There was snow all over the mountains so we nixed it but Saturday rolled around and we decided to head up just for the day. It was free parks day and since we had nothing else planned we went for it. It was chilly, but not bad, Sam was SO good and the kids had a blast. The animals were so active that we were able to see several bison and elk up close including a 12 point bull and 2 grizzlies! They were beautiful and actually got a little close for comfort, you can see in the movie that the grizzly encountered a buffalo which was kind of cool. We had never seen a bear in all our Yellowstone trips, so that was pretty neat. There's just something magical about that place and every time we leave we say we are going to go more often, it truly is a wonder of the world. We are so glad to live so close to it! It's definitely a tradition I hope continues on for many years with our family.

Tomorrow will be better

I needed this little reminder. My sweet softhearted Claire wrote me this note after I got upset about something stupid. She is so easy to forgive and to ask forgiveness. I hope I can be as Christlike as her someday. My Savior is there for me and tomorrow will always be better.