Thoughts on the Eve of My Birthday

So tomorrow is my 45th birthday. I've probably lived at least half of my lifetime. Part of me still feels like a teenager (complete with the acne to show for it! UGH!) and the other part of me feels really old and tired (that part is mostly my hips). Here are some things that I have learned over the first half of my lifetime:

1. Family is everything. And I mean EVERYTHING. Not only your own family created by you and your spouse, but also your extended family. Those relationships matter, so treat them like they do.
2. If you have children, enjoy them every day. Cuddle them, read to them, talk to them, listen to them, play with them, do things with them EVERY DAY. Try to not get mad at the messes, the broken things, the fighting, the noise. One day, there will be no more messes, no more broken things, no more fighting, no more noise. You will clean your house and it will stay clean. Your things will stay where you put them. There will be no more diapers to change, no more noses to wipe, no more hands to wash. No more holes in the knees, no more shoes outgrown, no more strollers to push. No more little clothes to wash and fold and put away. There will be quiet and it will make you cry. 
3. Things are not everything. They are basically NOTHING. They are there to make life more comfortable, convenient, and easier, but they can become your master if you allow them to. If you don't believe me, refer back to #1.
4. Little things matter. Smiles, manners, compliments, little thoughtful things matter. Mostly they cost you little to nothing, but to the person receiving them they can mean so much. 
5. True friends are hard to come by, but if you find a few real friends, be grateful. Friends can help you laugh through the hard times and keep you humble through the good times. In the cookie of life, friends are the chocolate chips.
6. Don't procrastinate! Do what you need to do when it needs to be done. You save yourself so much headache and stress, and who doesn't want that?
7. Listen more than you talk. Learn to hold your tongue. Don't say everything that pops into your head. When you talk make sure you have something important to say.
8. Give yourself permission to have a bad day once in awhile. It's okay. But don't wallow in it. Pick yourself up and have a great day the next day.
9. Enjoy life. Life is mostly good. Yeah, there's some garbage in it, but it's mostly good. Look for the good, the uplifting, the joyful. 
10. Be grateful. We all have many blessings we overlook each day. Count them once in awhile to remind yourself.
11. LIVE your life. Don't just endure it. Make choices that will help you live your life fully, gratefully, joyfully.

How Time Flies.......

It's been quite awhile since I have visited this blog and even longer since I have posted. Much life has passed by without me recording it. Anita is home from BYU-Hawaii. She returned September 2013. She is living at home and helping out with my daycare. Cody has returned from a very honorably served two year mission to the Philippines. That's 2 years of posts in itself. He will be returning to BYU-Provo for the Fall semester. Faha is on his mission to the Mexico Monterrey West Mission. He left December 2014. He is doing very well. Pasi just turned 16 and is a sophomore at Kearns High School. Siu is 13 and in 8th grade at Bennion Jr. High. All the kids are healthy and more or less happy.

Children are such a blessing, but are also our greatest challenge in life. They teach us so much and help us to grow. I'm so grateful to be a mother to my five fantastic kids! They are awesome and I love them so much! They make my life rich and full of fun and good times and they make my heart smile. 

Summer Sabbath Musings

It's an already warm Sunday morning.  I can't seem to get motivated to get up and get ready for church.  I have a lot of that problem lately.  Something I need to work on, I guess.

Yesterday we went to Provo to look for an apartment for Cody to stay in while he's going to BYU this fall.  We got lucky and found a little dump of a house for cheap and he signed the contract.  It's right next to campus, so that will be good since he won't have a car.  We had fun walking around campus.  It was pretty deserted.  We played around in the sculpture exhibit outside the art museum.  It was really hot and we were tired from walking all over, so we didn't stay too long.  We went out for a late lunch and headed home.

While walking around campus I was sure regretting that I didn't graduate and really wishing there were some way that I could go back to school and finish my degree.  Walking around college campuses does that to me.  We happened to see a sign across the street from Cody's rental house for apartment rentals for families.  The rent was super cheap!  I got all excited thinking, hey we could sell our house and move down there and I could finish school!  I spent the rest of the day dreaming of my big plans.  Then I went on the BYU website and looked at admissions for transfer students and my hopes came back down to reality.  The website said it is highly unlikely that students with more than 90 graded credit hours would be admitted.  I was so disappointed I could cry.  (And I did!)  I have way more than 90 credits.  I probably should just face  that I had my chance to earn a college degree and I blew it and move on with my life.  But boy, is it hard!

Summer is here!

Well, graduation has come and gone.  This boy is a high school graduate.  Doesn't he look good in his Tongan-wear? That is what he wore to seminary graduation where he played the prelude music on the violin with his friend and Faha played the viola and where he gave a wonderful talk about his favorite scripture Proverbs 3:5.  (Yes, I know that was a run on sentence)  I can't believe my boy is an adult now.  He just needs to get a job!  He is so excited about his plans to attend BYU-Provo for Fall semester and then go on his mission.

School is out and I have a house full of kids everyday.  It's hectic and noisy and messy, but it's also fun.  (Most of the time)  The kids are enjoying just playing and relaxing, which is what summer is supposed to be about, right? I always feel the pressure to make sure they are doing something educational and structured and I feel guilty when they are not, but I figure I will give them these first two weeks of summer vacation to just enjoy being kids.

Siu's New Room

So here is Siu's new room.  It turned out pretty cute.  I love the wall color! I had it matched to her new comforter set and with the lighting in her basement room with no natural light it looks great.  She is very happy with it and is doing well keeping it clean.  We found that crazy lamp at Home Depot and the trash can at Ross.  We especially like that the matching trash can has a lid so Dumb Dog can't get into her trash can.  We still need to make her American Girl doll (Ashley) her bed.  As you can see, she still has to sleep in the box she came in, poor thing.  If I can dig out my sewing room, then we can start sewing the bedding for her bed.  It matches Siu's bedding.  We are also going to iron some fabric peace signs on the wall.  I saw that project on pinterest and I loved the idea!  I also want to make a matching fabric cover for her vanity stool.  Ideas on how to do that?? I can't see where to take off the top to do it, so I may just have to put a cover over that one and try to staple it around while it's still attached to the legs.  There's no end to my projects, just completed phases.

So our tetherball literally was played to death.  It was a good investment of  $15.  The kids got a lot of playing time out of it.  Faha is the family champion tetherball player.  Not surprising since he is at least 5 inches taller than any of the rest of us and could probably bench press us all.

I've been doing a lot of moving things around, painting, and generally trying to spruce things up around the house.  I'm in the home stretch of my spring renovations.  Just one more room to paint, then I will be taking a vacation from moving and painting.  I love it though.  I love that I can make my house look totally different with just a little change here and there and spend minimal money doing it.  I like that kind of change.  I will post pictures of the room renovations soon.  Siu's and Pasi's rooms are probably picture ready, but Cody and Faha's room is NOT.  I'll wait until they get back from their music tour to San Francisco tomorrow and give them some time to clean up, then I will take pictures and post them.  I really love how Siu's room has turned out.

Farewell to Winter?

Today is the last official day of winter and I guess Mother Nature wanted us to make sure we remembered it. It's only snowed a little, but it's been cold and the wind was blowing like crazy last week.  I don't really like wind.  Maybe a nice gentle breeze, but anything stronger than that I don't like.  I'm hoping for a nice wet (rainy, NOT snowy) spring to green up my lawn and make it look really good.

Siu's dance class did their dance at the high school on Friday.  Their dance is to "King of New York" from "Newsies".  She likes it because she gets to dress up as a boy.  They did a really good job.  I didn't get any pictures of the dance, but I managed to get this shot before we left.  Isn't she cute?!

Ramblings of a Hypocrite

I'm a big hypocrite!  I know!  I complain about people who don't update their blogs, and then I don't update mine for a month and a half.  It's just there's not much exciting going on in my life right now, so I don't feel like sharing when I don't have anything new and exciting to share.

Homeschooling is going ok.  Wish I could say it was going better.  Some things are going well.  We are working on some things Siu wouldn't be working on in public school, such as memorizing the Articles of Faith.  She seems to have a hard time with memorizing things, so we have really been working on that.  It has taken us since we started on January 31st, but she has all 13 of the Articles of Faith memorized!  I'm very proud of her. It has taken much patience and hard work and even some tears, but she did it.  She is starting to say that she wants to go back to school, so I have made a deal with her that if she will memorize the times tables 1-12, and a few other things, then she can go back to public school.  I think that her biggest problem with math has been not having her times tables memorized, because she does very well with other math concepts.  She even seems to enjoy some things.  She has requested that we do more art.  UGH!  I'm horrible with art!  I don't know where my kids get their art talent, but I know it's NOT from me!  So we still have things to work on, but I may let her go back to school for the last term of the year.  We'll see how it goes.

I think I have spring cleaning fever, only I don't have the energy to go with it.  This results in much frustration because I want to get tons of things done, but my body just wants to sleep!  We are in the midst of changing everyone's bedrooms.  That's the best way I've found to really clean.  I got stalled a little bit because we decided to paint Cody and Faha's new room before we move them into it.  We did get most of the painting done on Saturday.  Now I just need to get the corners and up by the ceiling done.  Hopefully today I can finish that, then maybe they can move in tonight.  It looks really nice!  Then we can get Pasi into Cody's old room and get Faha's old room painted for Siu and get her moved.  My goal is to have it all done before next Sunday.  We are having company over for dinner Sunday night, so I would like to have the house all put back together before then.

Also planning to paint one wall in the living room.  I thought I had found the right color, but I did a test spot behind the couch and I don't really like it.  But it looks great in Cody and Faha's new room and they really like it there, so all is not lost.  Just have to keep looking for that perfect color for the living room.

Once I get the house put back together and give everything a good cleaning, I want to get started sewing some quilts.  I finally finished one I started about a year and a half ago.  I just decided one day I was going to finish it, not matter how bad a job I did or how bad it looked.  It will probably look horrible to an experienced (or maybe even inexperienced) quilter, but I finished it.  That was the most important thing for me. If I wait until I do it perfect, I will never, ever sew again!  So, it's deal with the imperfection, or give up altogether.  I decided to deal with it, because I enjoying sewing.  Maybe I'll get better the more I do it?

Finally!

Well, we've finally done it!  We have made a decision and a plan and we are going forward with it.  Siu has struggled in school and with school since she started kindergarten.  Even back then, I wanted to home school her, but didn't have the nerve to.  I was afraid she would miss out on something, or I wouldn't do a good enough job, etc.  And then each year as I watched her getting further behind, caring less and less, that little spark of excitement for learning getting dimmer and dimmer, it broke my heart.  Those little voices kept coming back to consider teaching her myself.  But then other voices would whisper in my other ear, that I'm not organized enough, I'm not structured enough, I might not do a good enough job and teach her everything that she needs to learn.  But things are getting worse, not better and I can't watch her continue on this way any more.  Monday morning I am withdrawing her from public school and we will start our homeschooling experience together.

Why can't I teach her?  I'm have taken all the elementary education classes.  I did most of my student teaching.  I just didn't graduate, but I still have all the training of an elementary teacher.  I know how to plan and teach lessons, but most important I love my little girl more than anybody!  I want what's best for her and right now I'm what's best for her.

We are both excited for this new experience and we are looking forward to discovering and learning together.

Do You Ever Wonder?

Sometimes I wish I could be on a "It's a Wonderful Life" type reality show.  Wouldn't that be cool?  You could see how things would be different if you were never born.  I wonder that a lot actually.  What would life be like without me?  Probably a lot better for some people.  Has my life really made any difference to anybody?  Most of the time it feels to me like everybody would be better off without me.  It's just one of those kind of days.

Pet Peeves and Other Nonsense

I hate it when I check someone's blog and they haven't updated it for forever. I go to their blog all excited to read some exciting new post, and then the disappointment when it's nothing new.  So if you are like me, you have probably been bugged that I haven't updated my blog.  I admit it.  I'm a great big hypocrite!  Sometimes I just can't think of anything exciting to write.  Mostly, it's just that I'm lazy. 

Today I'm listing my pet peeves after which will follow ten things I am thankful for. (Just so I end on a positive note and you don't think I'm just a crabby person all the time.)

My  Pet Peeves (in no particular order)

1. People who do not drive nicely.  Included in this are: people who do not merge correctly, people who won't let other people in especially when the lane is ending and there is NO other place to go and what the heck do you want me to do? Go off the road?? (Ok, I'm calming down now.), people who run red lights, people who turn left after their green arrow//green light has already turned red, not yellow, red! and they take up my green arrow that I have waited forever for!, people who make a right turn on a red light when I have a green left arrow, people who don't stop at crosswalks and who get annoyed at people who do and honk their obnoxious horns at them, people who change lanes right in front of me and then 2 seconds later turn right in front of me and I have to slam on my brakes to keep from hitting them, people who take my parking place that I am obviously waiting for and I have my blinker on and everything, and finally, driving my kids and the day care kids to school.  The closer it gets to the time that the bell is supposed to ring, the dumber people get.  I try to avoid it at all costs, even if that means taking the kids to school 20 minutes early to avoid the crazy drivers!

2.Trash anywhere except in the trash can.  Ask my kids.  I HATE trash on the floor.  To me that is the ultimate laziness, especially at my house where I have a trash can in nearly every room of the house. 

3. Frumpled rugs. Bugs the crud out of me!!

4. People who don't say please and thank you.

5. Deciding what to have for dinner every night and when I ask my family for ideas, all I get is, "I don't know." Then when I decide on something they have toast for dinner because they don't like what I made.

6. Solicitors, phone or otherwise.

7. Actually anyone who tries to sell me anything. If I want it, and can afford it, I will buy it.  If not, leave me alone!

8.  Dogs who poop all over the house!

9. Kids who don't do their responsibilities.

10. Days that I don't get anything done!

Now on to Ten Things I Am Thankful For:

1. My family!

2. The Gospel (especially repentance and the temple)

3. Our home, food, and clothing

4. Lincoln's job and my daycare kids and piano students

5. Freedom

6. Hot water and indoor plumbing

7. A washer and dryer

8. Vehicles to take us where we need to go in comfort

9.  Music

10. Computers and the internet so I can keep in touch with loved ones.  Especially Anita in Hawaii.

That is all for now.

My Boys of Fall

Ok, so I have given up on the boys posing for me, so I am using their football pictures.  Aren't they cute?  I just love my boys!  (And my girls, too, of course!!)  So happy that Faha should be able to finally play next week!   I'm very excited we get to go to the game tonight.  There was a possibility that we weren't going to be able to go.  I used to hate football, but I really love watching my boys play.  They are playing the Jordan Beetdiggers.  I hope they win!  Go Cougars!!  (Picture of Pasi coming later....)



Cody #26 Wide Receiver



Faha #58 Lineman

Back to School

I love this time of year!  I love that part from "You've Got Mail" when Meg Ryan is talking about bouquets of sharpened pencils.  I love shopping for school supplies.  It's a time full of possibilities.  It's the New Years of school season, setting goals, and fresh starts.

Things are a little different around here than they usually are at back to school time.  Anita is in Hawaii at BYU-Hawaii.  Lincoln and I took her in July.  She just finished her 1st Term and Fall Semester starts next week.  That will be a whole other post in itself.  But right now I'm in the mood to write about back to school and since this is my blog, I get to write whatever I want. hahaha 

This is Cody's senior year of high school.  He, once again, is trying to cram in as much as he possibly can.  There is never enough time for Cody to do all that he wants to do.  He is taking 2 AP classes, orchestra, is playing football, is in Madrigals, and is an SBO.  (In case you, like me, don't know what an SBO is that's short for Student Body Officer.  Cody is the school's Cultural Diversity Rep.)  Sometime in there he finds a little time to sleep, but sadly for me, not time to do his chores or clean his room.

Faha started high school this year.  He is a sophomore.  So far he is liking school and is doing well.  Mostly due to per pressure, he is playing football on the sophomore team.  Unfortunately, he got a concussion the first week of school and so hasn't been able to play in a game yet.  We are hoping he can play in next weeks game.  Faha is also in orchestra.  He made 1st chair viola!

Pasi started jr. high.  He's a 7th grader!  I can't believe it!  I think he already has a following of girls at his school.  He keeps telling them, "I can't date yet.  I'm a Mormon!"  He ran for 7th grade Senate, but lost.  I thought it was really great of him to run, though.  And he had the best campaign posters made by Cody, the master of poster making.

Siu is in 5th grade.  It's weird to only have one student at the elementary school.  It's been about 13 years since I've only had one child in elementary school.  Pasi and Siu guilted me into volunteering to be the room mom.  Pasi said that I need to be more involved in their schools.  Whatever!  Siu is still her free-spirit self.  I love her to death, but she does make me crazy sometimes.  It's a full time job keeping her focused on school.

A major focus of our lives right now is football, especially since all three boys are playing. I really love to watch my boys play football! So much so, that I am willing to pay ridiculous admission prices just for the privilege of watching the varsity play. I want to post pictures of all the boys in their football "stuff", but they are not cooperating. So, I guess I will have to do that later. 

One of my new school year resolutions is to cook dinner every night.  Due to football practice, we tend to eat late so I'm trying to use the crock pot as much as possible so I can get dinner in the crock pot in the morning and we can eat at a semi-decent time.  I did really good last week.  I used a new recipe book and tried 5 new crock pot recipies.  They were all pretty good.  One was especially delicious, Spicy Rice Casserole.  Post a comment if you want the recipe.  Yummy!

Other new school year resolutions are:
-read scriptures every night as a family and finish the Book of Mormon by the end of the year
-have family prayer every night
-make sure Siu gets her homework done every night
-sleep early! by 10:00
-no tv on school days

Hopefully everyone has a great school year! :)

The New Addition to the Family

This is Daisy, our new chihuahua dachshund mix.  She's 4 months old and really tiny and sweet.  She loves to lay by me and sleep anytime I sit down.  At night she sleeps with Siu.  We are still working on housetraining.  I'm really not a dog person, but she has almost won my heart by her being so sweet and mellow.

All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience.....

The past couple of weeks have been very difficult for me.  We have been trying to finish up on our mortgage refinance.  Hopefully that's almost ready for us to close on today or tomorrow.  Drama with my daycare.  Hopefully that is over as well.  Problems with the kids, especially Anita. It's really hard to see your kids struggle and not be able to make it better for them.  And health problems with me.

First I hurt my back lifting one of the daycare kids.  That had me in pain for almost a week.  Then that got better and my shoulder started hurting.  My shoulder, back, and right arm were hurting so bad.  It got progressively worse until finally I went to the dr last week Monday.  I have a rib out of place that is pinching a nerve.  I have not been in so much pain since I had my kids.  Seriously, the pain was as bad as labor pains.  It had me in tears.  Finally got some stronger pain medication that made the pain bearable.  Lincoln keeps warning me not to get addicted to pain medication.  I don't think there is any danger of that because I hate how they make me feel.  Anyway, now I'm seeing a chiropractor and he thinks it will take about a month of visits three times a week and it should be better. 

Before I went to the dr, we tried everything we could think of to ease the pain.  I put some rub on medication that is for muscle aches on it.  Apparently I'm allergic to it because I now have a ichy rash with hives and welts everywhere I rubbed that medicine on.  It's just lovely.  Then yesterday I started throwing up.  I feel like my whole body is falling apart.  I'm in a pain medication induced haze that I HATE.  I just want to feel good and be able to do my daily responsibilities and feel like I'm here, not like I'm in a dream.

I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to learn from this experience.  Maybe to be more patient with people who are sick.  I hope I hurry up and learn what I need to so I can get back to feeling good and be able to take care of my family, the daycare kids, and the house.

My Beautiful Girl

I just have to post Anita's senior pictures.  I'm so happy with how they turned out!  That's my beautiful baby girl all grown up!  I'm standing in puddles of mommy tears here.

My favorite is the top right one that she is smiling so big in.  That's the one I put up in the living room so I can see her big smile when she's gone away to college in Hawaii.

I love this girl so much and I'm so proud of all she has accomplished throughout her years in school
                                       and I know she will do fantastic in college, as well.
                                       I love you, Nita-girl!

Are You a Time-Starved Family?

I'm currently reading a very good book called, "The Time-Starved Family: Helping Overloaded Families Focus on What Matters Most", by Deanne Flynn.  I highly recommend it if you are feeling overwhelmed and stressed out by your family's schedule, and especially if you have little babies and children so you can avoid getting caught up in the "my child has to do everything before they can even read" syndrome.  These are some things to ask yourself to determine if you a time-starved family.  Have you ever heard the following statements (complaints, whines, etc.) coming out of your mouth?

• Family prayer?  I can't get all my kids together at the same time to have family prayer!
• Family scripture study??  Who has time for that?
• Family dinner?  We are lucky to eat, much less eat together as a family!
• Family Home Evening?  With all our activities, we do our own version of family home evening while driving to our next ___________ (fill in the blank, class, activity, practice, etc.).
• Family time?? Does time together in the car count?  If so, we have hours of family time each day!
• If my child wants to be a superstar ________________(fill in the blank, athlete, musician, dancer, etc.) then they have to start as young as possible, like 3 years old.
• Being well rounded means you have: sports practice, music lessons, dance lessons, art lessons, after school academic classes or tutoring, voice lessons, on and on. You get the picture.

I must admit I was on the "do it all" bandwagon.  But I'm trying to get off the wagon!  I used to take great pride (clue...DANGER word!) in rattling off my list of the many things my kids were involved in and that took up our time. It somehow made me feel like I was being a good mother to be so BUSY (being under Satan's yoke).  Now it just makes me sad.  My favorite quote from the book so far is, "Eternal life.....don't miss it for the world."  I want to do a big cross stitch of that and put it on the wall!

I agree with the author in her suggestion to choose one sports activity (or other activity if your kids aren't into sports) and one music activity per child at a time.  That's it!  I usually try to stick to that, but sometimes I go over.  Like right now Siu has dance (jazz, tap, ballet) class, Tahitian dance class and Up With Kids.  She also wanted to play soccer this spring.  I bravely have just ignored that request.  I talked with her yesterday and we decided she will finish out the commitments she has made to those activities, two finish in May and the other in June.  After that I will let her choose what she wants to do.  She decided on gymnastics and violin.  That's not necessarily what I would have chosen, but that's what she wants to do.  So I'm learning to let go and hoping that will be a good thing for our family.  I'm hoping we will be able to make time to do the things that really matter and if there's left over time, then we can do the other stuff.  Not the other way around!  I'm trying to embrace the "simple life" and hope that by doing so our life will be more fulfilling, spiritual, and more family centered and we won't miss eternal life for the world and the worldly things that can take over our lives if we let them.

On Being an Authoritarian Parent

I have taken parenting classes in college.  I am the mother of 5 children.  I am a daycare provider.  I take yearly training classes in childcare.  I feel I have had a little experience in working with children.  Even so, I have one child that is testing all the knowledge I thought I have about children.  That one is Siu.  We had parent teacher conferences last night and it wasn't pretty.

I try to not interfer and do things for my children that I feel they can do on their own.  I try to let them experience the natural consequences of their choices.  In short, I try to be an authoritarian type parent.  Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I don't.  I've made many mistakes as a mother, and probably will make many more.  But I feel that I have failed Siu somehow.  It is difficult to balance my daycare, piano lesson schedule, the other childrens activities, my household and church responsibilities.  I think that often Siu feels she doesn't get any of my attention.  As a result, she will do anything, even misbehave, to get my attention.

She has never really cared about school, but it continues to get worse and worse.  She is not progressing and has even regressed in some areas.  Last night was a wake up call for me and her as well, I think.  I need to stop standing on the side and need to be more active in helping to direct her to do what she needs to do.  She is almost finished with the 4th grade and she still hasn't memorized the times tables!  She continually tells me she is dumb and can't do this and can't do that.  I think she has just given up on school.  I don't know how to get her to want to learn, to want to do her best.  I guess I better learn because time is going on and I hate to see her struggle the rest of her school years when I know she can do the work and do well.  She is very smart, but she doesn't want anyone to know that she is. 

After we got home she was doing her reading and I told her that I loved her no matter what and she started crying.  It broke my heart!  She thought I wouldn't love her because she isn't doing well in school.  I told her that there was nothing she could do or not do that would make me stop loving her.  I'm praying for wisdom for this one, for sure!  I know I can't get through to this girl without some inspiration and help from Heavenly Father.  She can do anything, if she wants to do it.  I just have to help her learn to channel her energy, focus, talent and desire into positive things!!  I'm sure there was a reason why she is our youngest.  To make sure we were "broken in" as parents and were patient enough to help her and teach her.  I hope I can meet the challenge!!

Ups and Downs

I know there are ups and downs in life.  I know that there are good times and bad times.  It just seems like right now every single day is full of ups and downs.  It's like my life is on roller coaster mode right now.  One minute things are great and I have really good news, the next everything has changed and the good news is now disappointing news.  My emotions and feelings cannot handle it! 

We are trying to get everything set up for Anita to go to BYU-H in July.  We hope to be able to go with her to help her get settled and for Lincoln and I to take a much needed vacation together.  Lincoln and I have not been away just the two of us for more than one night since Anita was born.  In case you can't do the math, that's 18 1/2 years!  Our 20th anniversary will be on December 14 of this year.  So while I know that it's no record, by any means, it's still a pretty long time and we need some time to spend together without the kids.  What you also need to realize is that from one month after our marriage until after our 6th anniversary I was either pregnant or nursing continuously.  Now for those of you who have been pregnant, nursing, or married to someone who has been, you can imagine how that was.  And my pregnancies were not a piece of cake!  I think there were many times that Lincoln wondered who the heck he had married because it wasn't the same person he had dated!  We have been through a lot together and we really need some time to just reconnect and I think going back to where we started our relationship together is just about the perfect place!  Please say a little prayer for us that things will work out so we can go!!!!

A Day Almost to Myself

I have found myself with a day that is not too structured, not too crammed with things to do and not too busy with daycare children.  If you found yourself with such a day, what do you do?  I'm still planning out my day, but here are some things I would LOVE to do:
1. Maintain the clean house that we worked so hard to achieve on Saturday.
2. Get some good decluttering done inside the house and in the garage.
3. Finish Rugby's baby quilt.
4. Crochet some girl baby hats for baby Bella.
5. Relax!!!
6. Prepare a really nice dinner for tonight.
7. Get the shopping done so I don't have to go to the store again until Saturday.
8. Enjoy being home with my kids today.