February 12

How about a little about my day

1. This week we are on the letter t.
2. We made our valentine bags today. They are owls if you couldn't tell.
3.  Look how many miles we have on our  little car.  Still running well!
4.  Max and Luke's door full of love notes from me.
5.  Loging in my calories for the day.
6.  I guess he has been in the backyard enough to practice pedaling his little trike and he has gotten quite good.
7.  Playdate today. These 2 are fun together.
8.  I never did get a chance to get my hair all prettied up.
9.  Picking up the kids from school 3 o'clock.
10  Best part of the day getting a valentine in the mail from Nana and Papa.  Heart shaped folded money for each one of the kids.  
11. Dinner prep for tacos. Oh how I love my cilantro and lime.
12.  Finally bath time and then to bed.

The things we do

Honest last week is now a blur. Somethings I do remember 

Lilly: 

a) is doing a wonderful job practicing the piano. I have only had to reminder her one day and she was willing to do it. So far smooth sailing.  

b) the cutie reached her AR reading goal this week.  She has worked so hard to finish as one of the top kids in her class.  I love to see her enjoy reading.

Max: 

a) reached a reading milestone and is on the 200+ sight word list.  He knows those sight words but he refuses to read.  I know it will click for him, he would just rather go outside and play.

b) he beat the Donkey Kong game all by himself.

c) no accidents for a whole week WHOOOO HOOO!  I wasn't sure if I should write this down but since it has been such a big thing at our house and some day Max's wife might come to me and say "hey our little boy is having accidents, what did you do?" After I apologize to her for Max's childhood behaviors that we didn't let her know about because we were afraid she would have ran away.  I tell her the story how the one time his room smelled really bad and I did some poking around and found a PILE of soiled underwear hiding in his closet. (not a good day) I let her know that I finally got smart and made him go to the bathroom before he went outside to play. He had to stay in the bathroom for 5 to 10 mins. And just like that, problem solved. You think I would have come up with that one sooner.  I just really kept thinking that he was old enough to know.  

Anyway happy ending.

Luke:  

well he is a handful.  Very busy and very funny. He will repeat everything you say and has a comment for everything.  His favorite things are, to watch Max play Donkey Kong and ride Max's scooter.  He asks me to play Donkey Kong every afternoon but he gets so frustrated with me because I can't pass any level and I die within 2 mins of my turn.

With having such a good week. Kevin treated the kids to a camp out in the backyard.  They all were in heaven.  To make things better he took out his laptop and they watched "Avengers" and ate popcorn before they went to bed. Super dad I tell you.

(Here is this week's my 3 weekly photo)

I wanted to enjoy the awesome Arizona weather so we planed to take the kids out to breakfast Saturday morning to the restaurant our neighbor owns and then head over to Lost Dutchman state park.  We made it to breakfast but then decided that they weather was a little cooler then we anticipated and we where not prepared for a hike. We were out and back in the car so fast that I didn't even get a picture. I was a disappointed but we made plans to try again in a few weeks.
At dinner that night Kevin was feeling a little antsy for an adventure.  Somewhere in the conversation we had made plans to dress up as ninjas, take our nurf guns and sneak into his sister house and attack them with our ammo.

The planing of our mission took 4 times longer then the actual event. I'm afraid that we use our kids as an excuse to do silly things, but I'm pretty sure they had a good time too.

Accountability

Okay I posted my goals on this blog to keep me accountable so here are a few things to report

I gave a good declutter to my room this month.
read a conference talk every week, check

attend temple 6 times, I went twice 

daily prayer, check

exercise and  stay current weight

no sugar until Valentine's day

These were harder then I thought but I have kept up

sewing project 

meet the whole family of sock monkeys. 

I have had some people asked so here is where I nabbed the tutorial.
Super fun and my kids think I am super cool.
Photo projects check.
I really want to paint the door going out to the garage this month.  I have a book from the library that I have started reading and I really want to clean out another room.  

A Little Sad

I took down Luke's crib on Friday.  He has been in this big boy bed for a month now but I left up the crib because I knew it would be a sad moment. This was the crib that all my babies slept in.  The crib that I had to crawl under to find lost binkys. The crib that I would lay clean sweet smelling babies in after I would feed them, rock them and sing to them.  The crib that I saw all of their sweet faces peek over the bar when they finally learned to pull themselves up.  I loved my babies and I loved the crib that they slept in.

Now there are no babies in the house.  I have children that are learning and growing so much every day.  They talk to me, and tell what they need. They share with me their dreams and their accomplishments.  They have opinions and they ask questions.
I found them the other night all reading in Luke's bed.  I am overwhelmed with joy that I am their mother and  that for a small moment in time I was able to cradle them as babies.

Happy Groundhog Day

I have always liked groundhog's day. I think it because sometimes I like to celebrate silly things.  As the rest of the country rejoiced to find that Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow, we here in Arizona are a little saddened because we LOVE LOVE LOVE our winter weather and would gladly take 6 more weeks of it.  Today was a perfect AZ winter day. We took a picnic dinner and went for a little family walk.  The light was beautiful.

 After a few attempts this week, I finally got a shot I like for my 3 weekly challenge. I shot two I really like and can't choose yet again.

As we where on our walk I thought to myself that this right here, this moment, walking with my husband watching our 3 wonderful children skip along the trail and bask in the sunlight is the very moment that I dreamed of. I was reminded of this quote

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”Not that I'm really focused on what I "have not" right now I just like the last part, that this moment was once one of the things that I hoped for, and now it is mine and I am so so grateful for it.