living in a construction zone

When we bought our townhouse Jared and I knew there were both blessings and curses of owning your own home. Remodeling is both of those. A blessing because you can improve your home however you like. But a curse because it is expensive, chaotic, and time consuming. 

It has been busy around here. First, we finally fixed a leak in the upstairs window. Depending on the angle of wind, rain would drip right through the window and into the room. Yikes. It is fixed now, and we enjoy rain storms a lot more than we used to. 

We bought this bad boy fridge on craigslist and it has been a great fridge. It was a third the price of a new one, and will be great in our remodeled kitchen. 

Speaking of the kitchen, these are the old cabinets. We removed them last week and it felt therapeutic to see them hauled away in the trash. They were so gross, broken, and ugly. My house smells less like "old house." :)

this one was a beast to remove! demo was supposed to be the easy-peasy part.

My hero of a husband!! Many, many times I feel paralyzing anxiety when I think about remodeling the kitchen. We are doing as much as we can on our own, and with the help of a friend. Which is why I'm stressed. This is not where our talents and intuition lie, BUT Jared is impressing me. He is very good at research, so using that strength he's learning a lot. He's been my motivational speaker more than once, telling me not only should we do it to save money, but we CAN do it with excitement. I appreciate his optimism, drive, and hard work. Like I said, my hero!

Our new kitchen! ...sitting in the dining soon. 

Since the new cabinets arrived on Tuesday we have been working, but it is such a slow process. With every step forward we take a couple steps back. We have run into unforeseen roadblocks: a vent in the wall we're removing, not enough space in the floor to fit the new duct, buying the wrong materials, measuring wrong, working too late at night with a foggy brain, the wrong sized cabinet showed up. We're doing our best. But we sometimes learn things the hard way. Oh well. We fix it, and move forward. I'm holding on to what an improvement it will be when it's done!!

Any advice for us DIY kitchen newbies? 

I don't want to grow up...

I hope my children enjoy their childhood; that they look back and think, "I had so much fun I didn't even know I was learning so much!" Everyone, please help me remember this, because sometimes I was too serious for my (and their) own good. 

I cannot get enough of this picture. Her face and especially CHIN make me so happy. 

My kids sit and play in the backyard mud all the time. That's why the bum of their clothes look like this.

Mining for treasure

This is what my garden looked like back at the beginning of the Spring. It has definitely grown. We have eaten the lettuce greens and Swiss chard. The cabbage and cauliflower are not growing like I thought they would, though. I am still trying to figure out this gardening stuff. Oh, and the plastic snakes have done a good job of keeping the squirrels and bunnies away. They are my watch-dogs. 

These greens have grown to their fullest, been eaten, and are growing back. 

Family festival at the elementary school. We barely made it for the last hour, but the guy loved it.

let kids be kids

Let kids be kids by Kidsinger Jim
Let kids be kids.
Don't make em grow up too fast
Let their childhood last
Let kids be kids

Let them have Saturday morning cartoons, Big fat water balloons,
Scary carnival rides, gigantic water slides.
Let 'em out to play after the rain, take 'em on a choo-choo train
and when they're feeling blue, take down to the zoo.
Parents I'm talking to you!
 Let kids be kids.
Don't make 'em grow up too fast
Let their childhood last
Let kids be kids!
Let them have friends sleeping over night, an old fashion pillow fight,
camping out in the backyard, eating peanut butter from the jar.
Let them jump around on a trampoline
Don't make them always be clean
and when they're feeling down
 take 'em to the circus clown
that'll get rid of that frown!
Let kids be kids!
Don't make 'em grow up too fast
Let their childhood last
Let kids be kids!

This little guy was asked to be the "reverence boy" in junior primary at church. He was asked to stand at the front of the room with arms folded as a good example of reverence, while everyone got situated. He was a very, very good example in fact. 

His friend, the "reverence girl" started talking to him and I heard him whisper, "no talking." It totally cracked me up!

I wish I had gotten a shot of her actually wearing my shoes. She is so cute, so girly, and loves shoes!

No worries, just playing in the mulch in a white dress. 

We found an ant colony and colored them. Ants look better dressed in chalk anyway. 

S showed how clever he is by making a sword belt out of a visor. He loves (with a capital L) this sword and so he wanted to bring it everywhere. He came up with this on his own. 

Here's the visor in the back, and the black elastic holding his sword in place. 

"Look mom, we're parakeets on daddy's shoulder!" Squack!!

Man, I love these kids. They remind me of what childhood can be and how to enjoy the fun of it all. PS. M'lady does NOT always wear a dress, despite what they pictures suggest. :) We enjoy lots of sweats and jeans around here.

middle-of-the-night miracle

The other morning I woke up and opened all my curtains to let the sun shine in, like I always do. I opened the curtains at the sliding glass doors to find this! No more table?!?! Did some bandits come and steal my deck table in the middle of the night?!? Seriously, who does that? How does a table just disappear?!?

 Then I looked over the edge of the deck to see this! WHAAAAT?! 

There must have been some fierce wind in the night, because it picked up my umbrella which dragged the whole table with it and dropped them 20 feet below, without breaking the glass table top! I was flabbergasted. 

Miracles really do happen. They happen every day, maybe even in your own backyard. 

Easter celebrations

Easter is my favorite holiday. I love it most. More than Christmas, Halloween, New Year's or Independence day. I love that I get to celebrate the death and resurrection of my Savior with the rest of the Christian world. 

However, I know not all people who are Christians celebrate Easter like this. Recently Jared and I spend an entire evening discussing with our neighbors who are Jehovah's witnesses. I know they don't call their celebration "Easter" and neither do some of our other nondenominational Christian neighbors. Since the holiday has no origin in the Bible and has "pagan origins" instead, they celebrate Christ's resurrection differently. 

Personally, I'm more of a purist in this way also. I love Easter, not for the celebration of Spring solstice but for the symbolism of rebirth that is offered through Christ's atonement. The egg hunts are fun, but I'd rather find fruit in my eggs than candy. Actually, we filled our eggs with prunes and small toys this year. Jared and I had a good laugh at ourselves for being the weirdos that filled their eggs with individually wrapped prunes! Who thought of that anyway!? "I'm going to make a fortune selling individually wrapped prunes!" What? I thought it was hilarious. I had to support the person who made that possible. 

Anyway, back to the point. I love Easter and really appreciate when time is set aside to celebrate resurrection, rebirth, and renewal. I may start a family tradition of celebrating our rebirth through Christ's resurrection on the day of His birth. Joint (re)birthday celebrations!

This year we enjoyed lots of different festivities. First we went to a community egg hunt and brunch with lots of church friends. That's where we contributed plastic toys and individually wrapped prunes. ;) Next we enjoyed a family egg hunt and lunch with family and friends. Thank you to the Watson's for hosting and always sharing their fun traditions with us. 

We also celebrated using a week-long activity from the Friend magazine, remember events from the life of Christ leading to his resurrection on Easter day. Lastly, on Easter day my little guy and I delivered a single carnation flower to about a dozen friends, teachers, and neighbors to wish them Happy Easter. S picked which flower they received and then told them the good news: "Jesus was resurrected and lives again!" That was my favorite part of all our Easter rejoicings. 

Check out S's shinner. He had a bad slip and fall at home where he hit his face on the corner of our fireplace tile. Yikes. It bled a bit but mostly bruised all around his eye. He was brave and was confused was it was called a "black eye" when it was never really the color black. 

Family egg hunt

our Sunday morning gifts to the kids

They received face stickers for the eggs

S's on the left. L's on the right. So appropriate for their personalities. 

 Easter dinner was lamb chops, deviled eggs and a green salad. We tried explaining to the kids why we picked lamb. (Well, really Jared picked it but I rather like making a tradition out of eating our Pascal Lamb each year). It wasn't easy to explain that Jesus is the Lamb of God that was sacrificed for our sins. But He is also the Good Shepard whom we follow like obedient, trusting sheep...... And then we eat the lamb. Maybe one day it will make sense to them. 

This is her sign for water but she also says "wawa." Her Jersey daddy should be proud. :) 

I'll never be able to say Thank you Lord enough for His making the sacrifice for me and for the whole world. A sacrifice that not only do I not want to suffer through, but that is not even possible for me to offer. He gave to us what we could never have given ourselves. He deserves at least this one week a year to honor His sacrifice and His resurrection. 

Happy belated Easter everyone!

What family traditions do you observe for Easter? I'm always open to new ideas to help us celebrate!

Relief Society temple trip

Our Relief Society presidency has begun a tradition: a quarterly temple trip. It started as just the presidency, but then we thought it would be a great strength to invite others to join us. And it was. 

 It was a beautiful day to be at the House of the Lord. 

 There were only 5 of us at the temple that day, but just the planning of it helped many women prepare to go to the temple. Two of the five went to the temple to perform baptisms for the first time and many others received recommends for their first time, even though they were unavailable to come that morning. 

I know temples are essential to God's eternal work for the salvation of His children. Having one close to my home and being able to visit often have blessed me with strength, comfort, and power to do God's work both at home and away. Thank you friends for going with me! I love you. 

Thank you God

I love my view. A beautiful sight for any mom. Two little kids sitting quietly, looking at a variety of books. 

I love my job immensely. 

I thank God that He planted in my heart a desire to be a mother, that He then planted in my body the capacity to give life, and then has nurtured in my life two immaculate babies. 

I'm extremely thankful to be a mother, especially to my mister and milady. Thank you God.