Snowed-In for New Year's

We've been pretty snowed in these last few days. Thankfully Mike's been able to divide his time between PTO and working from home and we've enjoyed a lot of good family time...something I cherish! Mike snapped these cute pictures of our beautiful cat snuggled up with our beautiful little reader.

We did manage to get the entire family out of the house today, but first we had to dig our way out (again). We were on a mission. A mission to find tasty snacks and goodies to enjoy while we ring in the new year. Now, I'm the first one to confess I am not really a night owl. But my husband is! And so I'll stay up as late as I can and then it's off to bed with a promise to Mike he could sleep in tomorrow morning because I know he'll be partying late with the kids. Um, to be honest I don't think the kids have ever stayed up to midnight before...I anticipate Emma will be the only one who makes it this year and that's only because she's the only one who followed our advice and took a short nap this afternoon.

As for New Year's resolutions...I used to make so many I couldn't keep up with them. Now I only make one or two I would really like to accomplish or change about myself. Personally, I think it's better to take stock all through the year, not just in January. I like to believe I am constantly renewing myself, constantly changing and (hopefully) doing better.

My husband has been a huge inspiration to me this past year. He lost 20 pounds doing the P90X and he's recently started his second round to lose the last 10 pounds or so. He listened to the Old Testament while he commuted to and from work. And now he's almost finished with the Doctrine and Covenants. This past summer he built an awesome, totally awesome shed, but as he likes to refer to it...the secondary shelter. He's going back to school to finish his degree - (starting on Monday actually - so everyone leave him alone, hee-hee). He's also a great YM's/Boy Scout leader and I know he cares about those boys so much! He gives a lot of time and energy to a demanding calling. And last but not least - he's a great dad and a wonderful husband. His devotion to his family is admirable, especially when the world belittles and underappreciates fathers and families.

You are awesome Honey!

Here's to a heathly, happy, prosperous New Year.

Happy 2011 Everyone!

She's such a pretty cat!

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

These pictures pretty much speak the volumes of all the good fun we had.

Christmas Morning...

Christmas Cookies for Santa, (Christmas Eve)

My little Angels:

Is it over?!

Tradition

What is Christmas without a little tradition, right? One of my favorites as a kid was making "gingerbread" houses. I use quotation marks because in interest of time and/or ease we always used graham crackers instead of real gingerbread. As a kid I did not question the substitution too often. Now that I am the foreman of these little construction projects I will stand by my parents' tradition to the grave. I cannot imagine adding the complexity of making real gingerbread to the already complex undertaking of assisting three kids in assembling their masterpieces.

This is the first year we have made gingerbread houses since...well, before my mission. I wish I would have introduced Gail and the kids to the fun sooner, but lazy procrastination and an acute case of forgetfulness has prevented it...until now. My kids definitely inherited their artistic natures from Gail because I never came close to making gingerbread houses this nice at their ages.

Emma's

Aaron's

Rebekah's

Daddy's

My Christmas Joys

Christmas Pictures

Christmas Performances

Christmas School Projects...

& there's more to come!

It's Not Christmas...But It's Still So Cute!

Okay, okay - So these have nothing to do with Christmas BUT they're still so cute. She crawled under there and I just had to grab the camera.

I love her!

Christmas With Cousins

"Christmas is almost here - Can't you just feel it?"

I love Bekah's little pout & my little stud's smile!

Saying goodbye to our NY cousins.

(Bekah looks like she's DONE)

The 3 Amigos

"Get me out of this thing!"

Aaron and Ethan in a sea of girl cousins and sisters...

(Abigail & Lillian are also part of the female take over,

but they were not present)

Merry Christmas Cousins

We love you!

Six

My little boy is six!

I blinked my eyes and he went from that chunky-chunky baby to a skinny little man. He has my eyes and my straight hair, but I see so much of his father in him - especially when they sit side by side. Here he is sitting, (um I mean standing) on our traditional birthday rock. We've done this with our kids since Emma's very 1st birthday - it's one of my favorite traditions. One day it will be really cool to spread out 18 little birthday rock pictures on the table and watch how they grew up - (very quickly we're learning).

I love this picture...Aaron getting ready to blow out his 6 glowing candles!

Thanks Mom and Dad, it's just what I needed.

(Semi-excited.)

THANKS Mom & Dad...

(a bit more excited this time!)

Blow 'em out kiddo!

Aaron - I love the way you always like to figure things out. You definitely got that from your father. If something needs assembling, repair, or attachments put-on I'm now beginning to fear that you and your father are going to start fighting over who gets to fix it.

(But I love it! ... now let me go find that Honey Do list and you guys can get started.)

I love your eyes! It's such an incredible feeling to look into your eyes and see my eyes staring back at me. I love your mischievious little grin and the way your hair has that natural cowlick upfront - it's pretty cool to tell you the truth.

I love the way you've started to reason through things now. I love listening to your explanations of how things work and your elaborate descriptions...you definitely have a gift for fixing things but you would also make a good writer!

My baby boy is growing up so fast...it's truly bittersweet.

In some ways I really miss carrying you around on my hip all day, but then I do that with Mosey all the time and I have to admit, watching you run around instead of carrying you everywhere is a little easier on my back!

I love you so much Aaron!

Happy Birthday!

Love, Mom

Four

Presents, cake, birthday rock.

Need I say more?

We love you Kippy! So much!

12

Don't we look young!

Mike you are absolutley gorgeous!!

(I don't look so bad myself.)

This Picture was taken in 1999, we were about to celebrate our 1st wedding anniversary. On our 1st wedding anniversary we went to the Anniversary Inn...where else! And we stayed in the luxurious palace room. It was very romantic with a cheesecake dessert waiting for us in our room and a yummy breakfast to devour when we decided to finally get up, there was no rush, there were no children to hurry home to, no sitter to pay/relatives to relieve of our sometimes over-active children.

Eleven years later our anniversary get-a-way was not quite the same. Now that we have children our dates, our vacations and even our anniversary get-a-ways take a lot more work! This year I was in charge, (we switch years who plans) and I must admit I left some of that important planning to the last minute - I had my reasons, they come later. We tried for a overnight trip a month early because my mother was in between jobs and with her new found availability I thought she could watch our kids, but then she got a job and our free-babysitter fell through. We were forced to scramble and find someone last minute because I had booked our room in Park City through Hotwire and we were not allowed any cancellations/changes. We didn't want to be out the money and thankfully my sweetie of a sis-in-law was willing to take the kids on for the next 24 hours - everyone minus the baby. (She has a baby Mo's age and she certainly didn't need 8 children, 2 of which were babies on her hands - I could never inflict such torture on anyone)! Well, a "romantic" overnight trip just doesn't happen when you bring the tempermental tot along. But we did accomplish one of our goals for the weekend - seek and destroy that birthday/Christmas list...with clearance shopping for cute clothes at the Park City outlets and toy shopping at Toys R Us back in the valley our Oct. Nov. and Dec. b-days and then the big one - Christmas were almost complete.

THEN we tried again...this time much closer to our anniversary so I wouldn't have babysitter troubles again - see I had my reasons. But I was striking out...My mom - busy. The neighborhood girls - busy! (There was a dance). I guess this time I waited too long to find a sitter, is there a special window I'm missing here? Wait! My in-laws, if I we could bring our children to them, maybe they could watch them while we ate a nicer-than-usual dinner at the Maddox in Brigham City. Success! They were available, hooray!

We drove through a storm and I asked Mike twice if maybe we shouldn't just bag it and go home, was it really worth driving to Brigham in a storm like this? Yes. Yes it was! We were going on our anniversary date and a little rain turned snow was not stopping us. What about when the baby started screaming in the car, nope that wasn't stopping us either. We were about half way there when that high pitched screeching began, we had a lot of road behind us, we weren't turning around now! This time I was the one putting my foot down. "Let's just keep going, were NOT stopping, we'll put some food in her when we get the Grandma's and then we'll go on our romantic date!" I grumbled. Romantic huh?


(Sidenote: This was not our Winter Advisory Blizzard, it was the storm before that one, the one where it dumped on us during the middle of the night.)

Well, we finally made it, we put some food in the baby and we took off for our romantic dinner for two.

Um, that didn't happen so much...why you ask? Did the stressful ride chase away our romantic mood, did we miss our reservation, did we get in a fight? No. It happened again (*yes this same thing has happened before)...we got seated right next to the kitchen door and we got the dorkiest dork of a waiter. I ignored that familiar little nudge I had to mention that 'we were celebrating our 12th wedding anniversary and could you please give us a nice table' so instead we got seated right across from that annoying entry/exit all the servers use - with each swing of the wide entry door I caught a glimpse of the chaos that exists in the behind the scenes arena of every restaurant. Our waiter - don't get me started, he was present in body, but I think his brain checked out several hours before we got there. Normally I'm not picky about these types of things unless it's a special occasion, this was a special occasion! Well, I blame myself. I really should have planned better.

The three little chatter boxes stayed the night at Grandpa and Grandma's, then they went to their church in the morning. And this time I made sure every one's tummy was feeling normal...no more sleepovers that include lots and lots and lots, (it's worth mentioning one more time) LOTS of vomit. Thankfully no one puked. And we got one of the best anniversary presents anyone could give us. One child in Sacrament meeting instead of four! It was heaven - if you'll pardon the pun, absolutely heaven to only wrestle one, semi-mobile baby, who's easily distracted by her toys right now INSTEAD of four noisy, rambunctious and often down right irreverent little monsters. Yep I said it, monsters - I love 'em BUT they embarrass me sometimes.

And we would have made it to church on time except for all the snow! We actually thought they might cancel it again (see previous post to understand why) and then we saw the plow - once you see the plow come through the neighborhood there are no more excuses, get dressed!

Through it all I've learned something about myself...maybe it's just the stage of life I'm in currently, or maybe it's just the way I am (either reason is fine with me) I'm not really a romantic person, but I do appreciate relaxation. To me, relaxation is romantic. Peace and quiet is what I desire, a night without fighting or messes or endless childhood chatter is what I crave. If Mike wants to rub my feet while I put down a good book and call it a romantic get-a-way I'll take it. I will take it.

You may have noticed there isn't a current picture of us...ya that's coming later. I'm afraid after this type of post you'll understand it takes us longer to try and look that young again. Gray hair, crow's feet, and a forced smile...I blame the kids.


I'm kidding. Well, mostly.

*When I was pregnant with Aaron we went to Logan for our get-a-way and on my brother-in-law's recommendation we decided to eat dinner at the Blue Bird. Neither one of us had ever been there so we thought it would be kind of fun, and it was...I love the food, I love the rolls, I love the little candy shop, BUT they stuck us next to the stupid door again - this one was now a blocked door - blocked by our table being put there, I'm sure on the kitchen side of the door there was a note that read, (uh, uh, uh...remember don't go thru this door, there's a couple sitting directly on the other side trying very hard to have a romantic dinner...) See, this is why planning is so important Gail!

Ya, I was in charge of that one too.

My Little Snowballs!

It Snowed A Little Bit

A Can of low sodium V-8 sits against the 12" of snow we got last night.

And yes I did feel it necessary to add that it was low sodium. :)

These were taken in our back yard today.
Ya, it snowed a little bit...and then some!
The 1st BIG-SNOW! I can't wait to get out there and make a snowman...



or at least take pictures of Mike and the kids doing that, have fun guys,





I'll go start the hot cocoa.

Princess Party

Rebekah wanted a princess party and boy did Mom deliver!

Bekah had 8 little girlfriends over, oh pardon me, 8 little princesses join her in celebrating this momentous occasion. Her royal majesty made a darling Cinderella and a gracious host...um, that is until the end when all the other little princesses wanted to play with the freshly unwrapped treasures. It was then that our darling little princess lost it a little and shed some pretty big tears...party stress, we've all been there.

My little angel is growing up!

This makes me happy and sad. Rebekah grew up so quickly it seems. She was always a very quiet and content baby, I was truly spoiled, so I understand why the time went by so quickly. I relished in her peaceful personality and then she turned 3...and she wanted to start doing things her way...The Queen's Way. Anyone who has had a three year old in the house knows exactly what I'm taking about. Now we're here, at the threshold of turning 4, (we threw her party a little early because of Thanksgiving) and I'm sad the traces of babyhood I once saw in Bekah are quickly vanishing away, but excited to have a 4 year old again, it a much more agreeable age.

I love her cherub face, I love those adorable munchy cheeks, and she is one of the sweetest little angels I've ever known, inside and out! Don't ever change Bekah, you are beautiful & special & sweet & I love you so much I think I'll just burst with joy!

Is This The End of MGR Posts?

This year may mark the end of our blogging days. I've been mulling over the pros and cons for several weeks now. Part of me wants stop blogging and turn my attention to my other, more serious writing ambitions. And since I have very little spare time, (usually only Mo's nap time) I'm forced to use "MY" time effeciently...something I don't always do well.

I can't always sit down and blog as I'd like to and it frustrates me that laundry, meals, housework, and endless demands of my children interupt the writer trapped inside here. I know I chose this, but no woman truly understands how all consuming motherhood is until she's there in the midst of it, runny noses, crying baby, fighting kids, surrounded by another dumped over toy box, "uggh." A mother with young children, correction - several young children has a choice, get a sitter & pursue her own passions fulltime, try to juggle both, or focus on family and come back to those dreams later in life. I'm not putting the kids in day care, and I'm NOT that good at juggling, I want to go back to school but I know I can't do both at this stage of life. Plus Mike's already going to school, two of us in school would be absolutely nuts.

The other part of me, The Family Historian says, "You're crazy!" The blog offers an easy way to record what's happening in our family, without sitting down and painfulling scrawling it all out in a journal - OH, that's so old fashioned, plus, writing with a pencil or pen hurts my hand after two paragraphs, I'm way too accustomed to typing.

The blog helps keep us in touch with family and friends.

It will be a great book of remembrance for the children once we publish it in a book!

BUT don't I do that with all of our scrapbooks?

BUT I hardly journal our lives this much in the scrapbooks, since I started our blog those evolved into mostly fancy-shmancy picture albums.

Sometimes reading other people's blogs makes me turn a shade of green, as I envy the free time they have - as all their children are in school, or how they've successfully navigated their way through the baby years. Hold on, I think I smell a poopy diaper calling my name. I'm tired of poopy diapers.

Okay this is how I think out loud. Scary huh? Ya, you don't want to get too involved in my mind, it's a little cluttered up here sometimes.

Blogging has been so much fun. Maybe to satisfy both sides, I'll move to a designated blog time once a month, instead of feeling like I need to catch up all the time, I'll worry about it only at that time and during my other "free time" I'll pursue those dreams that are starting to feel very far away.



And to my blog's number one fan, don't worry Grandma Lois, I'll think I'll choose to keep the blog. I love you so much and you inspire my writing with all of your words of encouragement...us writers can be a sensitive bunch sometimes - constant encouragement and a lifetime supply are of chocolate help fight off even the worst cases of writer's block.

Wild Emma!

I love parent teacher conference! I especially love it when I come away with a funny story about my kids. Now, if you don't know Emma very well than this story may need a little more set up, but since most of the readers of this blog (all twelve of you) know her pretty well, I'll forgo the dramatic-build.

Her teacher told me, "Please don't be offended, but I kind of have a funny story about Emma." I assured I wouldn't get offended and to please proceed...(funny story - PLEASE tell - anything I can tease her about later in life, especially during those tween & teen years!)

She said, "One day I was calling for Emma, but she was in another room, so the kids asked her to specify, 'Which Emma?' Our Emma...the only one in our class, (that doesn't happen too often), to which the kids replied, 'Oh, Wild Emma!' "


I love that story! But I started thinking about why the kids saw it fitting to call her "Wild Emma." Could it be her animated personality? Or the way she kind of bounces around everywhere instead of just walking (most little kids do this - Aaron prefers to literally bounce off pieces of furniture or toy totes), or is it her hair? The wavey hair she sports so beautifully after we've braided and braided and braided the night before to produce what we like to call the "Lion Hair."

I love that girl! I love her energy, I love her child's zest for life! I especially love that her "energy" doesn't really come in the form of making messes anymore. It's more geared toward her passions - reading, fashion, writing stories, making new friends, art and theater (I'm including movies in there). Emma when you read this, (and yes I plan on making you sit down and read this), I hope you will know your Mother loves you so much!

Wild Emma will do just fine for now. But once you enter Junior High I must insist on a new knickname...

I'll tell you why later.

Quotable Kids

Last night Mike took Bekah to the store with him. They passed by a man standing at the Red Box when Bekah said, "That guy has chubby cheeks." (Thankfully she was soft enough he didn't hear). Then Mike said, "No he just has a beard. Ya know Bekah, you have cute little chubby cheeks." To which Bekah defiantly responded, "I don't have a beard!"

Boo!

Beware...The Candy Corn Vampire!

I love Halloween!

Just look at these cute little monsters.

The 2 Gorillas &...

The Wicked Witch and her 3 Little Cats.

A Birthday Tribute

This is our Aunt Coco.

(She's our Mom's sister.)

She's really fun and she likes to take us places.

Today is her 30th Birthday!

She likes to be silly with us and she's not afraid to

get down on the ground and wrestle!

Kids love to wrestle, ya know?!

We love you so much Aunt Coco!

And we hope you have a very Happy 30th Birthday!!

Baby Coco

Isn't she cute!

You must have been a beautiful baby!

I love ya sis!

Happy Birthday

Let's do lunch next week.

Love,

Gail