Happy 1st Birthday baby!

It's funny, as I write this Haddie is upstairs crying in her bed. She is tired from the days excitement and just can't settle down and go to sleep. Nonetheless, I am so grateful that she came into our family one year ago. She has been a blessing in my life. I really feel like with my other children I was so worried about messing up, so anxious to get each day over with so I could move on to the next. Haddie has really taught me how to enjoy the moment. I have relished her babyhood, and have to admit that I am deeply sorrowful to part with being the mother of babies. I was thinking tonight as I picked Haddie up like a pro that I have had a baby or toddler in the house for nine years. It's a little sad to me to step over the threshold as this precious time in my life comes to an end.
Anyway, enough blabbering. She looked SO cute sitting on her daddy that I couldn't resist a picture taking session. Haddie is walking now, and talking and being more expressive. She continues to be a climber. She loves to scale up things. Her new favorite is to climb up onto the dishwasher. She hasn't as yet figured out a way to get from the dishwasher to the counter, but she's close and it scares me.

Hadley's Cake and the cake for everyone else

Here is Hadley's cake. It turned out better than I think I've ever done with cake decorating. I found this SUPER awesome decorator's frosting recipe. It's the bomb. Anyway, I used the basketweave on the top and it looked cute, kind of spastic though, because where they met I would always get messed up and two lines would end up the same instead of opposite. Oh, well. I had a beautiful picture in my mind, and it turned out nothing like the picture. I was thinking soft baby pastels, and I got bright, almost neon colors.
I ran out of pink frosting and wasn't about to make any more, so I only did the basketweave on the top half and then I covered the bottom half with flowers.
Here are our beautiful Emma and Jules modeling the two cakes for us, please excuse their bangs, we are trying to grow them out.

Cake Time

She actually looked a little frightened when we brought out the cake and everyone started singing. She really wanted to touch the on fire candle, and she was too caught up with that to even attempt to blow out the candles.
She didn't know what to think about the cake at first. She delicately touched it and tasted a little lick. I thought for sure once she tasted that yummy frosting she'd dig right in.
Promising, but not quite what I was hoping for.
Obviously not quite what she was hoping for either, this is the messiest and farthest she got with her cake. A little taste, satisfy the curiosity and she was done.

A Prayer Request

This is my beautiful Aunt Lisa. She is just a little more than 6 years older than me, some of her kids are the same age as my kids. She has been living with Multiple Sclerosis now for 11 years or so. My mom just told me this morning that she now has a serious staff infection, and that the doctors are worried that with her compromised immune system, she won't be able to survive this infection. I know there is a lot to pray about these days, but if you remember, please pray for my Aunt Lisa!

Hair, hair and more hair

Well, these aren't the best pictures, and Julia looks shiny because I was messing with them in photoshop so you could actually see their hair. But, we have a new goal in our house. I was inspired by my friend Audrey. Our new goal is to get every single girl's hair (including mommy's) done everyday. It's no small task I can assure you, and we are going to have to wake up earlier to get things taken care of. But I can't tell you how happy I feel, and how happy my little girls feel. It makes such a big difference to put in the effort to make yourself look nice. It just naturally boosts your self-esteem and you feel more confident. This was our hair for the primary program. I think they both turned out cute, the pictures just do not do the grandeur of their hair justice. We got many compliments across the board.
If you are interested, I found several hair blogs that have been my inspiriation. Girly Do's By Jenn, She Does Hair, and Babes in Hairland.

Benjamin's Birthday Party

Well, my little buddy turned 4 on Monday. We had his party Saturday evening. He invited his three favorite friends: Daniel, Kathryn and Tyler. We had pancakes and sausage for dinner (one of Ben's favorites), played outside, watched Kung Fu Panda and had Diego cupcakes. It was a hit!














I can't say how happy we are to have Benny as a part of our family. We also had a close call on Tuesday. His asthma started acting up out of the blue and he went into respiratory distress. We ran him to Urgent Care and he was diagnosed as on the borderline between Bronchitis and Pneumonia. We are very glad that he was born in this time with all the medical advances, so that we can continue to have his bright shiny personality in our family! We love you Ben!

Individual shots

Ryan wanted to be a boxer. I couldn't find any cheap boxing costumes that I liked, so I made him this robe and shorts. I swear he was the most devonair boxer ever!
We found this idea on family fun.com. Julia told me that she liked this costume because of all the face paint. It's funny, I thought she looked a lot like a jack-o-lantern, but we kept hearing scarecrow, autumn princess, all sorts of random things.
Emmy was the most precious fire-fighter ever. This was actually the costume I bought for Ben last year, but he refused to wear any costume. Emmy saw it hanging up in my closet a few weeks ago and fell in love with the idea of being a fire-fighter for Halloween. It came with a little toy fire extinguisher which shot water like a squirt gun. I bet you can imagine how popular that was, and how fast it got broken!

Individual shots

Here's Benjamin. Everyone kept asking him which lion he was. I heard Lion King, Aslan, the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz, etc. But all Ben wanted to be was "a nice lion." He kept on holding onto the tail on the costume. I think he was a little bit out of his comfort zone, a little bit asthmatic, and a little bit tired.
My plump and juicy strawberry. Look at that cheezer grin, that's her new favorite face to make. I have to make a note here that Haddie took five steps all by herself today, and is actively practicing her walking. She's up, she's mobile. . .time to babyproof!

visitor

I ran Ryan's lunch over to the school this morning, and a visitor followed me home. He didn't have a collar on, and I wasn't quite sure what to do. We called animal control, and they were absolutely no help at all. We made posters and put them up all over. I had no idea how long he had been stray for, so we went to the store and bought him some food and some shampoo. I gave him a bath, because the kids felt bad that he had to stay outside, but I didn't want him in the house spreading fleas. So, we bathed him and fed him. By 3:30 even Ryan (who's always been afraid of dogs) was in love with him. When his owners called to claim him I had five broken hearts on my hands. Even Haddie loved our guest. I think I'm alone in the relief I felt when they called. I was pretty sure I didn't need one more living thing to care for!

Costumes

Here are my sweeties, they all looked SO great. Ben was a lion, Julia was a jack-o-lantern, Ryan was a boxer, Haddie was a strawberry and Emmy was a firefighter. Awesomeness!
Here's my fabulous family waiting for the other two wards' trunk-or-treat to start. Our ward, for whatever reason, doesn't do one. So, we always just impose on the other wards. But we bring a lot of candy, so that makes it okay!

Spooky Dinner

This was our festive Halloween dinner. We had "worms for brains" and "eyeball salad". It was kind of fun. I also planned on making a graveyard out of rice krispy treats and cookies, but I didn't make it that far, and now the rice krispy treats are almost gone. . .sigh.

The return of danger baby

This is Haddie's new favorite trick. She walks up the bottom wood part of the banister instead of using the stairs. What a crazy! Too be honest, I'm surprised she hasn't broken any bones yet, she's always attempting to scale something.

Pumpkins

We finally carved our pumpkins tonight. I'm always hesitant, because I'm usually the one that ends up doing all of the work. This year was pretty nice though. They, for the most part, scooped all the guts out of their own pumpkins. Emily and Julia drew me pictures of what they wanted their pumpkins to look like, and Ryan carved his own! It was a stellar pumpkin carving session!

W-A-H-O-O!

We went to the store today, and while we were there (even though we're poor) I decided to try on a couple pair of jeans because for the last couple of weeks if I run or jump my pants almost fall off :P
I grabbed a couple of size 10s, because I had been in 12s. Then on a whim I grabbed a size 8. To my utter astonishment, the size 8 fit! It was slightly tight, but it fit! I'm still in shock to be quite honest, the last time I remember buying size 8 pants was when Scott and I were dating--that's 10 years ago folks. So, if you're trying to lose some weight hang in there and keep trying--if I can do it (as addicted to caramels and ice cream as I was) anyone can!

Gratitude

Well, I'm working on gratitude. As I mentioned in a previous post, things are TIGHT finacially for us right now. So, I am trying to remember that things are definitely better than they once were. This is a scrapbook page I made of our first apartment. It was literally one room about 6 ft.x 6ft. The bathroom was SO small that the sink was out in the main room. You would walk in the door and have literally inches to scoot between the bed and the tiny refrigerator. Next to the refrigerator was a sucky gas stove, then the tiny bathroom, the sink, a tiny closet, my desk and you were back to the bed. We literally had 2 cubic feet of free space in the whole apartment. It was SO hot and we couldn't figure out why. The day we were moving out we discovered a knob on the old fashioned heater--too late to do us any good.
Oddly enough, our landlord was a former mission companion of Scott's father. We know refer to that landlord venomously as "the slum lord of Provo."
Another thing I'm grateful for is my own washer and dryer. We didn't have a set of our own until Emily was about a year old. I can't tell you what a nightmare it was to pack everything up (with a weeks worth of laundry from two small kids, a spitty baby and two adults) into my double stroller in the dead of winter with snow and ice all over the walks and streets and trying to hurry and get the laundry into the washers because I miraculously got all three of my kids to nap at the same time, but not wanting to leave them alone for long in the skanky apartment complex we lived in because it was cheap. Just thinking about it makes me sick to my stomach!

The Pumpkin Patch

So, my friend Caroline and I decided that it would be a fabulous idea to haul our kids to the Flower Mound Pumpkin Patch on Columbus Day. So you can accurately picture the experience I'm about the relate, you need to know that Caroline has four children between the ages of 11 and 5, and I of course have five children between the ages of almost 9 and almost 1. We pack everyone up and we're all excited. The kids to go see the pumpkins and the wood cut-outs of their favorite characters, jump on the jolly jumpers, get their faces painted, etc. And Caroline and I were pumped to have something to occupy our children's time for part of the no school day. Well, we get there and it is completely packed. We weren't even there fifteen minutes before we realized that it just wasn't going to happen. We had kids running in all directions, so excited the couldn't even control themselves. There were LONG lines for the jumpers. Anyway, that's why we only have two pictures. Caroline and I looked at each other and knew we had to get out of there. Instead we ate our picnic lunches at a park and headed to the dollar theater where half of our group watched Wall-E and the other half watched Journey to the Center of the Earth. Ben took the picture of Mickey and Minnie. I have NO CLUE who took the other one (and just in case you are wondering that is me in the pink shirt, and NO I haven't gained weight back, so don't panic! Yesterday I weighed in at 144, so I don't know why I look so fat in this picture).

My first jewelry

Thanks to my beautiful, talented and wonderful friend Marie, I made my first necklace and earring set today. It was a lot of fun, I really enjoyed it. I only wish we weren't quite so poor so I could go buy some beads and make another set! The skirt off to the right is part of an outfit I never knew what jewelry to wear with. It was my inspiration for the set and I am so excited to wear it together!

Give me some money!

Yesterday and today we had a garage sale. I told myself if I made $100 I would be happy. I raked in $320! I was ecstatic!
It's safe to say that I have a LOVE/HATE relationship with money. I love to spend it, I hate when it's gone, and it goes MUCH too quickly. As of thirty minutes ago I have spent all of that money. Pay tithing, allowances, two dollars to each kid to spend at neighbors sales, I had a little I needed to repay Scott and Julia, I had to buy food, had some pictures printed because that's one of their favorite things to look at during sacrament meeting. It was a community garage sale, and I found a chair and a rice cooker at my neighbors that were just too good to pass up! Pay for another week of Ryan and Julia's school lunches, buy some containers, baby oil and baby shampoo to send my sisters their first batch of homemade wipes, and WHAM-O! I am officially broke until Friday :( (Insert the sound of distraught weeping here)

A baby with a baby

I ran across this picture recently, and I was stunned. I look like a little girl--a baby with a baby. Looking back I realize now how young I was. Not just young in terms of age, but young emotionally, young spiritually, young in my own identity. I can see a lot of the reasons why people in the world think it unwise to start a family at such a young age. In some ways I agree with them, but there is definitely something to be said for putting yourself off in such a dramatic way. When you are a parent, you have to sacrifice so much for the good of that baby. The more kids you have, the more you have to focus on putting the needs of others first. You better understand how Heavenly Father must feel when he looks down on us, struggling through this life. Sometimes I want SO badly to step in and take all of life's cruel consequences away from my children, but I know I cannot. I know that they must learn for themselves. I guess I'm really just kind of thinking while I blog. What I really wanted to say was. . .even though I don't act accordingly at times, I am SO grateful to be a mother. I love each of my children so deeply and even though it is often monotonous and never-ending and brain-numbing and utterly frustrating, I wouldn't give it up for anything. Scott and I were watching a minister on TV the other day, Joel Osteen. He is the most positive person I have ever seen. He loves life, he loves good, everything is good and beautiuful. Watching him I decided that is what I want to become, that is what I must become if I want to survive the times in which we live. God is good, God is gracious, my life is full of blessings of which I am not worthy. I want to strive to become worthy of all I have been given. I want to see the beauty in each new day, the miracle that is each person you meet, the blessings that pour down from Heaven.

Handbag Planet.com

My friend Alyson (thanks Aly!) sent me an email about this contest at a new website called handbagplanet.com. On October 15th they are going to give away 24 free handbags, one every hour for 24 hrs. They are darling! You should go check it out and register for the contest!