Thankful.

I am so thankful for my life, for my family and for all of my many, many blessings.  I have a good life.  I live in a peaceful, safe, happy place.  I have a warm home to live in and plenty of healthy food to eat.  I have a seemingly unlimited supply of clean water to drink.  I have the Gospel of Jesus Christ in my life, the Priesthood and the many blessings available to me through that, temples and the covenants made there, the Holy Ghost as my companion, and a family that has been sealed for eternity.  I am especially thankful for eternity as this month I have lost a couple of people I love.  I have friends that love me and entertain me and support me, a job that I  genuinely love, and money and means to take care of our family and myself.  I have a good life.  I do.  This Thanksgiving season, I am especially thankful.

One of the apps on my phone that I enjoy fooling around with is Instagram.  Mostly, I enjoy the sneak peeks into my friends' and family's lives and the interaction I have with them through this medium.  In June, I participated in a Photo a Day June challenge on Instagram, and it was really fun to have an excuse to take at least one photo a day for the entire month, and to see others' photos that they took.  This month, I decided to do something similar: a personal challenge, I suppose, that I called "Thankvember."  These are the photos (as well as the commentary) that were included.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Day 8

Day 9

Day 10

Day 11

Day 12

Day 13

Day 14

Day 15

Day 16

Day 17

Day 18

Day 19

Day 20

Day 21

Day 22

Day 23

Day 24

Day 25

Day 26

Day 27

Day 28

Day 29

Day 30

Thankvember Day 1: I'm thankful that today is warm, enough so that I can air out my house after going crazy with a new room spray!

Thankvember Day 2: I'm thankful that we live nearby (some) family... so we can play with darling little cuties like this one!

Thankvember Day 3: I am thankful for [Brittney Pack] and a spectacularly fun girls' night out! Woooo! ;)

Thankvember Day 4: Thankful for the chaos... it means I have two beautiful, healthy, energetic children in the house.

Thankvember Day 5: I'm thankful for the education/awareness/knowledge I have regarding health and nutrition, and the tools/resources/support I have that help me implement said knowledge into my life.

Thankvember Day 6: I'm so thankful for children with correctly formed, intelligent minds.  It's amazing to see James absorb so much knowledge and develop so many skills.  Kindergarten is awesome!

Thankvember Day 7: I'm thankful for a good, hard run.  And for beautiful fall weather that makes it pleasant!

Thankvember Day 8: I'm thankful for my children's friendships.

Thankvember Day 9: Today I'm especially thankful for a warm home.

Thankvember Day 10: Thankful for the awesome and often hilarious men in my life. :D

Thankvember Day 11: I'm thankful for the ever-rare (and now nonexistent, ha) excess money that allows us to buy fun and frivolous things.

Thankvember Day 12: I'm so thankful for the amazing father of my children.  There's no one I'd rather go through the rest of my crazy life with.

Thankvember Day 13: I'm thankful for the energy and motivation that resulted in a nice, clean house!

Thankvember Day 14: I'm so grateful for the abundance that we have.  That I can feed my family, and that I can provide healthy, delicious meals.

Thankvember Day 15: I'm thankful for my job.  For the money of it for sure, but more so for the amazing and inspiring people that come into my life because of it!

Thankvember Day 16: Thankful for wonderful little boys who will someday be amazing men.  You're welcome, world.

Thankvember Day 17: Sooo thankful for a husband who let me sleep in and cleaned my house while I slept!! Sorry, ladies, but my husband is more amazing than yours! ;)

Thankvember Day 18: So, so thankful for the Book of Mormon and the inspiration, comfort, and guidance that I find within its pages.

Thankvember Day 19: Thankful for late night snacks... and that my metabolism hasn't entirely crashed and burned just yet. :)

Thankvember Day 20: I'm so thankful that I'm able to be a Stay at Home Mom.  Especially on days like this when one or both of my kids needs extra attention from mommy.  I'm glad I've got it to give to them.

Thankvember Day 21: I'm thankful for the incredible power of imagination!

Thankvember Day 22: Thankful for good traditions, even the small ones.

Thankvember Day 23: Thankful for family movie night(s)!

Thankvember Day 24: Thankful that my in-laws are not my outlaws! So many people can't stand their in-laws, but I really quite love mine!

Thankvember Day 25: So thankful that I "chose wisely" a husband who loves God and the Gospel and honors his Priesthood and church responsibilities.

Thankvember Day 26: Lousy picture demonstration, but I'm thankful for modern medicine and the quality (and quantity) of life it allows me and so many others.

Thankvember Day 27: Thankful that my potty trainee is cooperative... today.

Thankvember Day 28: I am thankful for good books.

Thankvember Day 29: Thankful for quality entertainment.

Thankvember Day 30: There's not much better than a cozy evening at home as a family.  I'm thankful that this evening was one of them.  It was much needed and much appreciated.

And because the whole reason for thinking such thankful thoughts was Thanksgiving (say that five times fast), here are a couple of pictures of my darling kidlets on Thanksgiving.  My gosh, I love these two.

 

Happy Thanksgiving!!  I hope your November was as wonderful and filled with thanks as mine was!  Love you all.  xo

Happy Halloweeeeeen!

Better late than never, eh?  :)  This year the children both chose their own costumes- with no prompting or inspiration by me.  This is a fairly big deal as I am fairly controlling.  But it was fun.  James changed his mind about a million times (he had been looking forward to Halloween since last November... the kid's obsessed), but he settled on one by October 1st and stuck with it.  First he wanted to be Frankenstein.  Then a super hero of sorts (I cannot for the life of me remember for some reason).  Then back to Frankenstein.  Then a mummy.  He settled on the mummy.  Jolie decided on what she wanted to be and never changed.  Pinkalicious.  A character from her favorite book.  A very girly, very non-scary, very pink costume.  I shouldn't have been surprised.  She is a major fan of pink.  I bought the fabric to make James' costume at the first of the month (possibly in September, even), and the suspense was killing him.  He could. Not. Wait. for Halloween! Kinda cute.  So finally, a few days before Halloween, we had a Halloween party with our neighbor friends, and I cut the material into strips and made him into a mummy.  At long last.  He looked good but not great.  Trial runs on costumes and make up are good for that reason.  Then, on Halloween, he looked awesome.  They both did.  James' mummy costume was a hit and got lots of compliments from fellow trick-or-treaters, and Jolie was possibly the most beautiful girl on the block!  I love my babies and am partial, of course, but seriously.  So cute.

It was a fun Halloween.  We got ready for trick-or-treating pretty quickly after James got home from school and Jolie got up from her nap.  We went out while it was still light, as it was just getting dark (which, sadly, is way too early nowadays). We went up and down our street, and up and down maybe one more.  My student and her husband and little boy met up with us and went around with us, which was fun.  After an hour or two of roaming the streets and collecting candy and having way too much kid-oriented fun, we came inside.  Aida and her family joined us.  We had pulled pork in the crockpot and invited them to stay for past-bedtime dinner.  They did.  The kids had so much fun playing with her baby, and we had a good time chatting and getting to know one another.  Although there was no dance party this year (bummer), it was still a great Halloween and a wonderful evening.

After our friends had left, we got the kids ready for bed.  But instead of zipping them off to bed asap as we often (try to) do, we sort of took our time and enjoyed one another.  Derek had bought dry ice earlier that afternoon to make a spooooky witches' brew, and he got the rest out to play with the kids.  It was really cute to watch.  He was teaching them, entertaining them, and bonding with them, and I just sat by and watched.  I could never see enough of that; it made me so happy.  Finally, way past bedtime and fully satisfied with our wonderful Halloween, we all hit the sack.  The next day, James was itchin' for Christmas! :)  

Happy {belated} Halloween.  I hope it was spoooooooktacularly fun!\

Twenty-Nine Bottles of Beer on the... Oh, Wait.

I had a birthday almost a month ago.  This is my last year being "twenty-something." That is pretty sad... :(  My birthday, however, was not sad.  It was awesome!  Here's how it went down:

The big day landed on a Thursday this year which was inconvenient due to the fact that Derek works on weekdays, and I work on Thursday nights.  Boo.  But somehow we were still able to have a spectacular, satisfying celebration.  It was perfect, really.

During the day, while Derek worked, the kids and I cleaned.  A lot.  Like washing walls a lot.  It was kinda weird.  I mean, since when do I feel the urge to scrub my house when I have a very legitimate, comes-once-a-year-excuse not to?  (Answer: almost never.)  But I really wanted a clean house for my birthday; it really needed a good scrub, and I had a ton of motivation to just get it done.  The great thing: my house looked great that day and for several days later, which made me really happy and content.

Once Derek got home, we did homework with James and then got ready to go.  The family took me out to eat for an early dinner (4:30pm) at a delicious place in town called The Indian Oven.  YUMMM!  The kids were so excited to go.  We've made a tradition of going out to eat as a family when it's someone's birthday and letting that someone choose their favorite restaurant.  For James' birthday, we went to Firehouse. Of course.  And for mine, James talked for weeks about how he knew where I wanted to go... to get Indian food.  And he was right.  Mamma loves her some Lamb Tikka Masala.  Mmm!  

So anyway, we were the first (and only, as it was so early) people there and got there right when they opened.  We had called on our way to pre-order, explaining that we were under a bit of a time crunch.  And They. Were. Awesome.  We got there and were immediately greeted with our appetizer.  Then the second we had finished that, our entrees arrived.  The owner served us personally, and we had the entire restaurant to ourselves.  It felt super, super fun and very special.  I loved it.

As soon as we were finished eating and content (it was spectacular, by the way!), we paid and were on our way home.  Once home, we ate cake and opened my present.  A note on the cake:  

It. Was. AMAZING!  

I'm not even exaggerating when I say that it was the best cake I have ever (ever!) eaten!!  And Derek made it himself!  It was a moist white cake with lemon filling between the layers and an amazing cream cheese frosting on top.  Oh, man.  I'm salivating even thinking of it.  It was so, so sweet seeing Derek put the time and effort into making a cake for me.  (He'd even gone all the way across town to get the filling from a bakery I love!)  And while the cake didn't look  as great as he'd planned (the frosting didn't set up enough... ), it was (like I said) amazing.  Mmm!  Mmm! Mmm mmm mmm!

As for the present...  Well, my amazing-and-oh-so-sexy husband overdid himself in that regard too!  He got me an Empire Red KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer.  

This is something I have wanted desperately for YEARS!  Really.  Eight at least.  He got me exactly the one I've dreamed of, and I LOVE it.  It is perfect.  It's possible I will start a blog just to post photos of how beautiful it looks every day (false, though tempting). :)  It's also possible that I cried when I saw it in the box (true).  Yes, I really do love it that much.  And the sweetest part of it all was that Derek used his own personal stash (which is a rare and somewhat sacred commodity around here as we usually just share our resources) to buy it for me.  I know!!  My husband is a rock star.

Once the cake was enjoyed and the present was revealed, it was time for Mommy to go to work.  So I kissed my beautiful family and headed to work, where I partied in an English-learning kind of way with my school peeps (also known as "students" - ha).  

I wore a hot pink ribbon button that said "Birthday Girl" to work... Derek gave it to me and said I had to.  It was funny.  Oh, and at the end of class, without prompting, my darling students broke out singing "Happy Birthday" to me.  I didn't even realize they knew that song! It was so sweet.  

And then, when it was just about bedtime (for most normal humans), I headed home, pulled on the jammies and ate MORE amazingly delicious cake... Mmm.  Then I slept like a baby, knowing that I had just lived a most perfect, perfect day.

Happy birthday to ME!

Kindie Garden

My baby started kindergarten last Wednesday.  I can hardly believe it.  I'm officially old.

It was seriously the craziest week!  I'm barely feeling like I'm recovering from it all.  :)  My mom was staying with us for a few weeks while she was between residences (her contract was up on her old place, and she was looking for a new one), and on Monday- she signed a contract for her new place and started moving in.  We got a U-Haul and everything; it was no small thing (she has a lot of stuff).  We moved a ton that night and then kept the U-Haul to use again on Tuesday.  Mom took work off on Tuesday so she could finish the move.  Derek still had to work, but the kids and I went to her house to help.  We were in the middle of it all when her phone rang, and she found out she needed to drive down to Provo ASAP- a family emergency of sorts.  Craziness.  So she left, and we came home.

I put the kids down for naps and got ready for work.  As I was hurrying to get ready (and running late), my phone rang.  It was the charter school we' ve been trying to get James into for the past six months.  I seriously had called them just about every day this month to see if James had moved up the waiting list at all.  Their classes started on Tuesday (the same day we're discussing), and I knew he was close.  Just that morning, however, I'd called to see if James had made the cut and was told he hadn't.  So I came to terms with the idea of not going there and told James all about the public school he would be attending and how cool it would be and how he could even wear shirts with pictures on them (as the charter school requires uniform-type attire).  And yet, around 5:20pm on Tuesday, they called.  Apparently one of their students in the pm class did not show up to the first day of school and there was consequently an opening.  If we wanted James in, he would start the next day.

I wasn't sure of what to do.  On one hand, I'd wanted James in this school (for various reasons) for months!  Yet on the other hand, I'd lately been feeling good about the public school and had been prepping James for it.  I told the girl I'd call her back after I talked to Derek.  After a bit of discussion (and a bit of panic on my part), we decided to go for it.  I called to tell her we were in, ran the concept by James (trying to pump him up about the idea of starting school the very next day) and stopped by Walmart on my way home from work to buy school supplies and khaki shorts.  We got everything sorted and ready, and he started kindergarten on Wednesday.

I went in with him on Wednesday while they were between classes so that he could see the school and meet the teacher.  The secretary is ridiculously sweet and took him for a little tour of the school, showing the library, playground, etc. He was pretty excited about what he saw.  Then we met his teachers (one's an aide) and dropped off the (enormous amounts of) school supplies we'd brought.  We left and hit up McDonalds for a quick, celebratory lunch before school (don't worry; his breakfast was much healthier and heartier).  Derek met us there on his lunch break.  We'd wanted to have Derek give our kids a father's blessing before their first days of school, but the craziness of how this particular first day went down made that fall through the cracks.  So we improvised.  After lunch, we piled in the car with James on Derek's lap... and Derek was able to give James a blessing after all.  :)

James and I went back to school after that.  They had me stay since I'd missed the intro day where parents sat in on Tuesday, so I got to watch and see just how wonderful kindergarten was going to be.  And it really was.  James did great!  I was so proud of him!  And so excited for him!  The teacher was fantastic; his classmates were adorable; and really, the whole day was fabulous.  He's going to love kindergarten.  It's possible he already does.

It's such a bitter-sweet thing to watch my baby grow up.  But regardless of the craziness surrounding this step toward independence and adulthood (sniff), it was a happy day.  I might just be able to let him go without me each day.  Maybe.

Dear Elder B

Here is a copy of a letter I wrote for Michael (ahem... Elder B) yesterday.  I thought it would be good to record for journaling purposes, as it covers a whole lot of what we've been up to lately.  For those of you who don't know and care to:  My little brother, Michael, is currently serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  He will serve for two whole years, 24/7, and he only recently started.  I was so nervous for him... scared he would be lonely or sad, nervous he would struggle with the language (his mission is Spanish-speaking), afraid he would have a bad first impression, etc.  As such, I was thrilled to hear otherwise: to learn that he was happy, had made friends, and was feeling the Spirit strongly and knowing that what he was doing and Whom he was doing it for were all worth it.  I'm so proud of this kid!  Anyway, here is my letter in reply to his first.  Enjoy... but be warned:  it's wordy.



Dear Elder B,

Thank you so much for your letter!  It absolutely made my day!  Your drawing was also great.  It made me smile.  :)  I'm sorry this letter is in English.  I'll work on the whole  Español thing...

So, hi!  Right now it is 9:30am.  Derek is at work, and James, Jolie and I are kicking it in the living room.  James is building LEGOs, and Jolie is trying to "help."  hehe.  I was able to distract her, though.  Right now she's coloring a picture for you.  It's spectacular ... (wink).

We threw James a birthday party on the 14th - a couple of Saturdays ago.  It was a LEGO party, and it was lots of fun.  We made a LEGO piñata, played "I Spy the LEGO Guy," did a pin-the-parts-on-the-LEGO-kid game, and ate a yummy LEGO cake.  We even scored soem LEGO-shaped candies to serve!  Super fun!  It was also super time intensive, getting everything together.  He was so happy, though.  I'd do it again in a heartbeat.  And that is why James is currently building LEGOs.  He got a whole bunch of sets as gifts, and he's been just a little bit obsessed since then. :)  It's kinda cute.


And what has Jolie been up to?  Hm.  Well she's been taking swimming lessons (so has James...).  She and I do Water Babies - a parent and child class.  I basically hold her and help her learn how to blow bubbles in the water, kick her legs, float on her back, etc.  She really hates floating on her back.  She can't handle getting her ears wet.  But hey, getting her angry results in more kicking.  So we'll take it. :)


As for Derek and me, we're just doing the same ol' thing.  Derek goes to work, comes home to hang with the fam, and then when kids are in bed, he generally plays games.  Currently he's into an online Lord of the Rings game.  I do swimming lessons with the kids, do the rest of the mom-things all day, and then (on Tue/Thur at least) go to work and teach people English.  After I come home, I generally stay up way too late watching Ugly Betty via Netflix!  Wow, we waste a lot of time!


We have gotten back into reading scriptures together at night again (we're kind of off and on with that, or have been lately).  It's been really fun!  We got a book from Julie a few years ago called "Unlocking the Book of Mormon."  We found it again and have been studying from it again.  We really love it!  On one side of each page, it has the (unaltered) actual scriptures.  Then on the other side of the page it has quotes from prophets and other people (scholars, etc) as well as additional helpful information: historical side notes, maps, pictures, etc.  It makes the Book of Mormon come alive for me and helps me make better sense of the plot, etc.  It's fun!  And Derek (probably thanks to his mission) knows a ton more about the scriptures than I do, so discussing it all with him is really cool.


Oh- one last thing we've been up to:  the kids (along with Shawn and Mindy's girls) dressed up as pioneers ad marched in the 24th of July parade!  They were sooo cute!  James wore a cowboy hat, bandanna and chaps.  Jolie wore a bonnet, apron and skirt.  James also carried a stick horse and "galloped" on occasion.  That got quite the crowd reaction; it was pretty adorable.  Oh, and Jolie wants to add that she carried a baby (doll).  I'll try to print out a few pictures so you can see.  No promises, though.  I'm pretty sucky at printing pics.


As for you, keep up the good work!  It sounds like you're doing really well.  I'm so, so glad to hear it.  I'm glad you've made friends with the guys in your district.  They sound like a lot of fun!  And best of all, I'm thrilled that you're having such a positive, spiritual experience there.  You're a good missionary and a good guy.  I"m so proud of you!


I love you so, so much!  I'm so proud of you as well!  You are doing the Lord's work.  Thank you.  'Hope to hear from you soon!


Lots of love,
Becca