Life and Gratitude

It never fails that life always gets ahead of me, and I find myself not blogging again. I could make excuses like I have kids and a house and our laptop died and I lost all my pictures and didn't want to blog without any pictures. But really it all comes down to the fact that I'm a numbers girl . . . . hence being a math teacher. I never feel like I have anything to write about that is important or worth the time writing or your time reading. But today I feel a lot of gratitude and wanted to share with you.

I feel so grateful that I have a happy and healthy family. Two things have made me feel this way, they are both very tragic and I am a little disappointed in myself that it takes something like this to make me realize how blessed I am. All to often I am caugt up in the business of life and don't stop to see the little things like my blessings.

First off, Kiya's preschool teacher was my Young Women's president for a while and her children are my age. One of her sons a year ago all of a sudden lost his sight one day, they have no idea why, and at this point have not been able to do anything to restore his sight. Then right after Thanksgiving his only child (2 years old) had an accident where some fencing fell on top of him and he has severe brain damage. I look at their little family and can't even imagine having to deal with both of those challenges so close together. And even though they still have their little boy here with them on earth, he will be completely different forever. They may never hear his laugh again, or see him running around playing. It just makes me treasure every moment that I have with my girls because you never know when something could happen.

The other thing happened last week. A lady in our ward went in for a simple routine surgery on her foot and everything seemed to be fine. The next day she went back to the hospital for heart pain and since then has had heart, lung, and kidney failure. She has been on life support since last Saturday, and the doctors are trying to figure out what is best for her. She has some bad infections and had to have her leg amputated on top of all of this.
Our ward has had specials fasts for her the past two weeks and talked a lot about faith, and miracles. I have participated in fasting and praying for her, and have felt the spirit many times throughout the past week. Things seem to be getting better at this point and not worse so that is good. I am grateful to have my faith and testimony strengthened through this experience.

This again is proof of how quickly your life can change, and I'm just glad to have a wonderful husband who I know is beside me through everything, and two beautiful girls who make me smile everyday.

Dinner x 2

I had a lot of stuff this afternoon so I thought I would be on top of things and throw something together in the crockpot before I left. Now, I'm not that great at using my crockpot. I just don't have any good recipes I suppose, and tonight was proof of that. After browsing through several recipes online I found one that I had all the ingredients for, and quickly put it all together before having to pick Kiya up from school.

Upon returning home at 6:00 I was so excited to have dinner already to go, but then I walked in my house. OH it smelled disgusting, and looked even worse. It was just some chicken and ham and swiss cheese and other things that shouldn't have been so fowl smelling, but man oh man it was bad. We didn't even take one bite, but it has been my experience that things usually taste like they smell and I wasn't about to eat that.

Out came the grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. I usually like cooking, but it definitely isn't my favorite thing to do twice in one night.

2011

I'm not a goal kind of person. I can set them but then a week or two later they are forgotten. So this year I'm going to keep it simple.

1) Spend less time reading everyone else's blogs and spend more time writing on my own blog. (It's the only journaling I do, so I HAVE to be better)

2) Love more! I've decided that I have always thought of myself first and others last, and it's about time that changed. If I do that I think I'll love spending time with my kids more and be a better wife. Hopefully.

3) Make a budget and stick to it. I can't afford not to. I have a fabric addiction lately, and it is so hard for me to not buy fabric to quilt with.

Cheers to a great year.

My Baby is 3!!!

Well it was Jaynie's birthday right before Thanksgiving and like they say, better late then never. I seriously can not believe that my little girl is three now. Time really does go by fast. It seems like only a few months ago that I was crying over the fact that I had an 8 month old baby and was shockingly pregnant again. But oh the joy she has brought to our house. Jaynie is like a can and a half of spunk. She has so much energy and is soooo happy (except for when she is sooooooo throwing a temper tantrum, which happens at least once a day). Jaynie gives the best hugs and is always telling me that I am her favorite mom, which brings a smile to my face. She is very polite and quick to remind the rest of us to say please, or excuse me.

For her cake Jaynie wanted a naked Cinderella. I know my jaw dropped wide open too the first time she told me. But we eventually worked it out and convinced her that a fully clothed Cinderella would be the best option. When we picked up the cake Kiya look at it and said, "Mom, I'm gonna cry it is so beautiful." Then I cried because I was laughing so hard.

We love our Jaynie, and are very grateful that she is part of our little family.

Loving This

This is amazing to me. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Dang Library Books

Now I know why my mother always disliked taking us children to the library. One book . . . count it O.N.E. book always ends up missing. It's hiding in a different place every time. But every 3 weeks without fail I cannot account for that sneaky little thing.

Today our library books are due back. I was going to take the books with me in the morning so that when I picked up the girls from Grandma's house we could go strait to the library. Except for that I could only find 3 out of the 7 books. So we came home this afternoon from Grandmas to look for the books. I left everything in the car and dashed up the stairs to begin my search. An hour later I found all of the books except one, and have no idea where it is, but Ben read it to the girls the day before so it should be easy to find, right? WRONG! After much more searching I finally found the book under my bed. Don't ask me how it got there, probably the dog.

Now here is where it gets exciting. We get shoes and socks back on everyone and head down to the car where I left everything and I mean everything, purse, keys, coats. And guess what . . . my darling Jaynie has locked the car doors. Why you ask, well I don't know. But now I have two crying children who are so sad that they can't go to the library and want to why in the world I can't open the car doors. But wait it gets better, Ben has class and won't be coming home from work and then school until around 9:30 to let me into my car.

I guess that the library will just have to wait another day.

Pre-Halloween Activities

Well all, I guess it's time for that once a year occurrence where I (Ben) get to contribute something to our family blog. I seem to find reading blogs of friends a lot more entertaining than actually posting one of my own.

Well our little family has been all a buzz this year in anticipation for Halloween. The girls are excited to dress up as princess'. Now since Jaynie dresses up like a princess every other day of the year, I asked her if she wanted to dress up as something else... and she wouldn't have anything to do with it. Oh well, she'll always be one of my princess', so might as well let her dress up as one as often as she can (that is until dressing up as a princess becomes socially unacceptable...I give it 11 more years). We made it up to Cache Valley to participate in the annual tradition of walking through the pumpkin patch. That event is always such a fun memory maker (and for the first time in a long time we didn't have to wear winter clothes as we walked through).

Tonight (28 Oct) we happened to be flipping through the channels and noticed the opening credits to the Charlie Brown cartoon "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" and the girls and Amanda wanted to watch it. To be honest, for some reason, I wasn't ever a real big Charlie Brown fan (it seemed to dull and boring to me), so as the girls settled in to watch the movie, I went downstairs to work out. After about 45 minutes I came upstairs and happened upon the following scene...

I guess I'm not the only one in the family that thinks Charlie Brown is kind of borish after all.

Well I guess that about wraps up my time for the year. We all excited for Saturday to go Trick-0r-Treating. We're just hoping that one of our Cinderella's don't lose one of their glass slippers as were going door to door.