I HAVE DONE IT AT LAST...THE UPDATE!

Do you think I should bribe Owen with this when he is old enough to Date!

A song comes to mind..."SISTERS, SISTERS"

I haven't been very diligent about much lately.
Writing in newsletters, updating my blog, eating right, exercising....showering.
It seems that when Owen hit 6 months old everything just spiraled out of control.
I could not keep up with anything. He has arrived at the age of need. He cannot crawl but can sit up. So he becomes frustrated when he is not being entertained. My girls do a good job entertaining him but that only lasts so long. He really needs to be with mom.
This makes doing the things I need to do almost impossible.

I am not complaining though just saying at as it is.
I am truly enjoying every bit of his babyhood.
He is a good baby, he just really wants to get moving, once he does I think he will be happier.
He has had problems with spit up still. His medicine stopped working so we have upped the dosage, we will have to see how that goes. I really am sick of being wet all day.
He is beginning to have a schedule for naps and goes to bed by 7:00 every night, and wakes
up at 7:00 every morning. That has been nice. He is in need of more calories then Mom can provide. He loves to eat. He is already going through 2 jars of stage one baby food a day. It is so fun to watch him grow.

Eleanor is so fun. She is blossoming so much. She is so often lumped with her older sister that it is a real treat to have her alone. She is such a tender sweet girl. She will still let you hold her for long periods of time. Those are my favorite moments, when we just cuddle on the couch. I know that they won't last.
She loves to be everywhere that he sister is, this drives Madi crazy. But she learns a lot from her.
She is so pleasant as is often more quiet then Madi ever was.
When Madi is not home the house is actually very quiet and Eleanor is content to play alone. Although I become a little suspicious when it gets too quiet. More often then not she is happily in her room playing with the ponies or Legos, content as she can be. Only once in a while has she found the lotion and decided that her face, arms, pants, and shirt were in need of some soothing moisturizer, it is winter after all. Or that she needed a little bit of color to her pale face blue, or green are a nice shade. I didn't know that the markers were out.
Independence is a much needed thing to her, getting water out of the fridge every ten minutes. Spilling water from the cup every ten minutes and wiping up the water from the fridge every ten minutes. She is TWO after all. What a fun age. Challenging, but fun.

Madi is 5 and with that age came a new sense of self.
She assumed that she would finally get to ride that bus that comes in front of our house everyday. What a heart break it was when she could not. It is hard to hold her back. She is so determined to learn and grow that she is reading and writing already. She reads everything that she can. It is amazing how fast she learns.
She is full of energy, so much energy. Santa gave her a hula hoop. What an investment. We were not sure if she would get the hang of it or not. She did! She can hula hoop now for at least three minutes at time. I must say I am impressed. She and I read the Tale Of Desperaux together, it was nice to spend that time with her and a good book that we both loved. (The movie pales in comparison to the book.) We also finished reading the Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. We have enjoyed that too. Kate DiCamillo is a good author. Now we are looking for our next adventure.
I have been just been trying to keep up with everyone.
It will be nice when Madi can start school and I will some time with my other two in the mornings.
And she will be able to talk to people her age, for once.
I am serving as a Second Counselor in Primary.
I am also preparing for the Stake play..."Savior of the World", where I am playing the role of Mary's Mother. I am very excited to have the chance to do something like this, it is already a testimony building experience.
Brian has been traveling about every other week now. It is getting a little easier each time he goes. I still get pretty tired, with three little kids to handle. When he is home it is always wonderful.
Brian was just called to be a ward missionary, since that call came we get called by the missionaries at least once a day. Is that normal? I don't know. I know they need help but we do have a family too. Our family is blessed for his service though, when he goes out, it has been a spiritual experience for him.
We had a casualty in our house recently, our computer stopped computing. It has been frustrating. I think we have about seven months of photos stored in it. We were stupid and never got them onto a disk. So now we are trying to find a way to recover them. Then we will get them onto a disk. We have a new computer now. Which of course is something we did not plan on having to buy, yikes. We thought we could go with out one, but have found that it is almost impossible.

DID YOU KNOW THAT SANTA CAN DELIVER TOYS YOU LEAVE SOMEWHERE ELSE.
WELL, HE DOES!
My daughters left behind some of their special toys at my brother's so I asked Santa if he could help me out! He did!
Christmas morning they found their old loved toys under the tree with all the shinning presents.

THEIR EYES LIT UP WITH LOVE. Ithink we could have stopped with those two things they were so happy to have them back.
SANTA IS SO NICE!

YES, I know it has been not updated.
I love to blog and I love to take pictures...Why is there nothing here.
Well, many reasons really.
1. Our computer bit the dust.
2. My pictures are in the other computer...still trying to recover them.
3. When I finnally got around to blogging all of this happened.

I know I should have updated before all of this happened.
But my time was so occupied before.
I had decided that I needed to get it done, scheduled a time. Much to my displeasure I could not.
I know. All of you are waiting with baited breath for my fabulous updated blog....It is on the way.
First, I must come up with something captiving, motivating, tantilizing and worthy of my wonderful audience.
Whether it be true or not.
I could resort to merely telling it as it is.
With so much passing time.
It would be unfathomable to not present to you some tale of high flying adventure or sailing on the sea...wich may or may not be true.
But perhaps the truth as uncolored and mundane may be, It is my life.
so may you all wait to see what tale I will tell.
I will bring you news.

Happy Halloween!





I love the fall... the leaves falling, the pumpkins, the warm soups on a cold day.
Staying inside to watch a movie-cuddling on the couch (in your P.J.s).
Increasingly with my age my like of Halloween has grown distant.
I love the costumes and I love the fun that the kids have.
I don't like the ghouls and ghosts and all the dark things that seem to come with Halloween.
I love the cute clowns, the princess and all the sweet innocent and funny things that come.

BUT above all that I love to carve pumpkins.
With a family of 5 we have to carve 5. It is a lot of work. To me it is worth it.
We had Madi and Nori help clean them our.
YUCK! Is all Madi could say. Nori thought it was fun.

We carved them a little early because Brian had to go to Canada for work.
Brian left the week of Halloween and didn't come home until after all of the Halloween Festivities.
It is a lot of work to take a Running 5 year old out and a 2 year old who stops at every rock tree, and needs to look at the candy that she gets, but they had a blast.
We were glad to get Brian that night and my burden became a little lighter.
He has been going quite a bit.
We are adjusting to the traveling, it gets a little easier but we still
really miss Brian when he is gone.

But he loves his job so we cannot complain.

Contentment? Me?

These are the pictures of contentment and peace.


Have you ever felt content?
It seems sudden to me...I do.

I can't say I don't worry about my housework, or money, or my family.
And yes I still think about those last 10 okay 20 pounds of baby fat...
that are slowly sliding off. I hope.

I am okay if my laundry goes unfolded.
I am happy if I can save money on groceries (thanks Shauntell!)
I am taking each moment of my children's lives as they come.
They Just grow to fast.
As for that pesky baby fat...I will get rid of it...but I still need to have a piece of chocolate.
I am okay with that.

For what seems like a long time.
I am not wishing to be some where else.
Be someone else.
Have someone else's money or success.

I woke up happy to just be.
SO what if my favorite jeans will have to wait.
SO what if I don't get to shower until noon.
I have all I need right now.

I only feel motivated to improve this renewed sense of life to ENJOY IT.
I want to make it better, strengthen it make it last.
I want to read with Madi longer, Play with Eleanor more.
And hold my little Owen forever.
Hugging and loving my husband always...

The moments are fleeting, and I have been trying too hard over time to push them on, saying, I can't wait until... instead of catching them, loving them and laughing at them.

Maybe this is the until for me...now! If so I am so glad!
I only have this life to get ready for the next why have I been so caught up getting to the until...

I suppose it would be easy to say I am content so, I am done.
NO this is not that kind of contentment.
I find this to be the "I have it good, I want this to be real."
I want to read, pray, and study...I don't want to coast anymore waiting for life to happen.
It is happening.
I am in it....I must love it.

Heavenly father has blessed me with this feeling of loving my life.
Loving who I am, who my children are and who my husband is.
I have changed in a way I cannot describe.
I want more joy.
I want to keep it.
I am content, but reaching for more of the stuff that brings real happiness.

Lots of catch up

We had to cut Eleanor's Hair. I think we cut off about three inches.
This had to happen because an older sister thought it needed it.
She was so sneaky about the whole thing, she hid it well.
Nori's hair is so fine that I comb and do it while it is wet, that I didn't discover it for a long time.
When I finally saw it I couldn't really get after her.


Our Family visited the Hill Air Force Museum.
We wanted to show the girls where the big fighter jets come from in Ogden.
So we went. They liked the planes but really enjoyed going to the kids center.
There the got to dress up and pretend to fly in a plane.
They loved it.

Then another weekend we decided at the last minute to go to Antelope Island.
Which really stinks...I mean it smells bad.
It was around dinner time and we were able to have a picnic at the ranch.
During dinner we saw some deer and bison.
The deer got so close that Madi thought she would chase the baby.
It seemed that the fawn made a sport of it and seemed to run more slowly.
After that we headed out to the lake.
I took some photos of the sunset because it was so beautiful.
Little Owen is getting so big so fast.It is so fun to have a little boy in the house.

On August 15th-17th there was a Ogden Balloon Festival.
I have lived only an hour away from this event for 9 years and never even knew about it.
It was spectacular.
The pictures really do the sight no justice.
I have never seen anything so exciting.

We woke up at 5:oo am to get to Eden, Utah were it was held.
Only a 25 minute drive from Ogden.
The balloons take off twice a day.
Early morning and early evening, but it is a better chance they will not have bad winds in the morning.
We watched them set up the balloons fill them up and were able to capture a lot of beautiful pictures.

I felt like a little kid brimming with excitement, so much so that I began to cry.
I think if I were still under the age of twelve I would of squealed from excitement instead.
But this reaction is unfit for an adult. So instead my excitement came in the form of tears.
I had the same reaction 5 years ago when I saw dolphins for the first time. (Silly, huh?)
I had never seen either of these things in real life and I had always for some reason been intrigued by them.
I really with we could have gone up in one, that would be the ultimate thing for me.
$175 is a bit too steep.
Many years ago I wanted to go hang gliding but now I'd rather ride in a hot air balloon.
As funny as it sounds some day I'd like to swim with the dolphins.

Our girls were squealing and jumping around, they thought it was so fun.
I think it was wonderful. And it was free, we love free.
They did serve a pretty good all you can eat breakfast for a reasonable deal.
Although it was early in the morning and we are really feeling it, it was worth all the sleep that we lost that day.

I recommend it to all.











Post Options

We have had a lot happen in the last few weeks so much in fact I am very behind on my blog.
We had Owen's baby blessing.
It is always such a wonderful thing to gather as family and friends to celebrate.
I love to see my family surrounded with so many who are living righteously.