New Years Resolutions

Every year I try to set an attainable goal for myself.  I know most people do, but rather than setting resolutions that get broken and forgotten about by January 15th, I try to set goals that I won't forget, and can be met.  The best way I found to do this is to set an open ended resolution.  Instead of saying I want to read 50 biographies this year, I would say, I want to read more biographies, be it 2 or 200 if I read one, I have succeeded and it takes the pressure off.  

Also, I think pretty hard about what exactly my goals will be.  I try not to overload myself by setting too many.  This year I am gonna take a spin off of my friend's blog post.  (Go read it, it's awesome, also the outcome of the post... fantastic, really.)  To very much sum it up, she downsized Christmas, and made it special.  Each person got three gifts one thing they needed, one thing they wanted, and one thing for their body in representation of Christ's three gifts.  

So my spin...  I will set 3 resolutions: One frivolous one (gold). One spiritual one (frankincense).  One health one (myrrh).

1. I will go on dates with my husband to do things new and entertaining... Though I love going out to dinner, sometimes dinner and a movie feels a little rut like... especially when there aren't any good movies out. 

2. Going to the Temple.  We have no excuses, the youth in our ward babysit for free if you are going to the Temple, so why don't I go more often?  

3. I will use my treadmill more.  Once my toe is no longer broken...  

Now, as a family I have only one resolution in mind:  We will get better at having Family Home Evening.  In previous years we have tackled family prayer and family scripture study.  Both of which are a regular occurrence in our house now.  It's time to make FHE a regular activity too.  

I think these goals are realistic, and yet they won't be too easy...

On a lighter note, I have made up some resolutions for my kids... 

For Lilia:

I will not fake being sick because I hate getting up so early for school, since it's my own fault for needing to be put on A track school time.  (A track, for those who don't know, starts an hour and 15 minutes before B track)

For Lacey:

I will stop needing diapers at night.  I am a big girl, and should be able to get the bathroom at night.  Especially now that the basement bathroom is up and running.

For Matthew:

I will stop growing up so fast since I realize I am my Momma's last baby and she is sad to see my babyhood disappearing so quickly.

Happy New Year to everyone!  May your resolutions hold true.

Attention!

What happens to my freezer jam when I stop paying attention...

What happens to the toilet paper when I stop paying attention... Matthew unrolled a bunch, and I couldn't stand to waste it so I told the girls we had to use it...  Lilia broke the long sheet into strips of two squares or three squares and labeled them accordingly... (hahaha)

 What happens on the coffee table when I stop paying attention...  Look close and maybe lean your head to the left... There is a matching print just out of view of the camera...  Little monkies...

What happens to your cinnamon rolls when I stop paying attention.  Matthew ate the center out of all but three of them...

What happens to my husband when I stop paying attention.  He fell asleep, and Matthew covered him with a blanket and gave him some stuffed animals. So cute!

What happens in the bathroom when I stop paying attention... Matthew turns his bath into a shower (pulled up the little plug thingy) and scared himself half to death.  And, so no one thinks I am truly awful I was actually sitting right there, but I didn't see him reach for it until it was too late.

In the previous post I showed what happens to the Christmas tree when you stop paying attention.  Well, an hour after Matthew knocked over the tree Lacey knocked over her dresser... seems using the dresser as a ladder to reach the top drawers is a bad idea...  She was fine.  A small scratch on her hand and a little shook up, but fine none the less...

And last and by no means least, What happens when your son pays a lot of attention at church.  He was singing along with Daddy (though just as I took the picture he closed the book).  And yes, I snapped a picture at church... it was cute.

Christmas Time, Once Again

Every year I put up our fabulous fake tree the day after Thanksgiving.  And every year I hate the tree and everything on it by Christmas morning, and therefore every year the day after Christmas the tree comes down.  Oddly enough every year I then make Joe promise not to let me put it up so early the next year, and every year he doesn't remember ever promising to do that... and therefore every year, I get all excited and put it up the day after Thanksgiving, again...   Do you see a cycle here? :)  Maybe someday I will learn.  But that wouldn't be this year, cause well, the day after Thanksgiving I had that tree up and decorated!  ::sigh::

Why, you might ask, do I hate my tree come Dec. 26th?  Well because of these:

 

Mostly just that last one though, this year...  Why exactly do they cause me to hate my tree?  Well, because they do this:

And then a couple days ago, the little one did this:  

BEFORE (don't mind the lighting)

AFTER

It's times like that when I have to remind myself that it's just "stuff." Sure one of the broken ornaments was Lacey's "First Christmas" ornament, and another one was 25 years old, but still... it's just stuff.  And in case you are wondering, Matthew was fine.  He pushed it over, so he wasn't in the path of destruction...

On a happier note, when I un-decorated it to fix the branches and pearl garland, I had to redecorate it, and I think it may just look better now than it did the first time.  Still- It's a good thing that boy is cute.  It may be one of the only things keeping him alive.  Oddly enough, though fascinated with the things hanging on the tree he is not at all interested in these:

I hope you all have a FABULOUS Christmas!  For that matter, I hope we do too! :) Merry Christmas ya'll!

That no good, quiet, beefy family!

Lilia has a class assignment where she broke down each member of our family and I just had to share it... spelling as she wrote it.  Corrections I deem necessary are in parenthesis.

FAMILY

1 brother - Matthew - cute - funny - energetic - hansome - 1
1 sister - Lacey - no good -  funny - crase (crazy) -  werd (weird) - cute - 4
1 pet - Migge (Midge) - fast - prize - black - jumpy
1 mom - Pam - care - quite (quiet) - nice - funny - 30
1 dad - Joe - quite - worc - cool - awesome - value - beefy - 33
me - Lilia - nice - fun - funny - cute- quite - 7
togethr - play games - ride bikes - hang owt with family

Okay... so I was giggling when she said her sister is no good.  And was wondering if she was talking about the same mom when she said I am quiet, but when she called her dad beefy I about died laughing.  Man, I love this kid!

An Odd Place to Find Inspiration...

So one of my very favorite TV shows is Biggest Loser.  Its one of only two reality TV shows I like.  The other is The Amazing Race, but that's neither here nor there...  Anyway, I love watching BL.  It's such an inspiring show, and I love to see the contestants whose lives are TRULY changed because of their time on "The Ranch."  Now, I know I just said the show was inspiring, but the inspiration I recieved last night was not of the physical weight loss variety.  It was more of a spiritual nature.  And, though I love this show, its one flaw is the language... not very spiritually connected...

So I was watching last Tuesday's episode last night, and something was said about losing weight that I got to thinking about. Bob Harper and one of his contestants, Sunny, were given the opportunity to travel to Sunny's home for a week.  When she got home, her family was over the moon cheering and laughing at how good she looked.  Later, Bob took Sunny to a local gym for a workout, and she became upset because last time she went to her local gym some punk kids were laughing at her size.  It embarrassed her so badly that she never returned to the gym.  Bob pretty much called her out on that.  He said (I am paraphrasing, here), "Do you remember the reaction your family had when they saw you? You need to remember THAT.  Not those kids who teased you. Your family deserves you being healthy.  Come to the gym for them."

This brought to mind a time a couple years ago when someone in my ward (local church group) had said some pretty terrible things about me and my family to just about anyone who would listen to her.  I remember I was getting ready for church when Joe came home from his Sunday morning meeting to ask me what had happened between me and this girl, since he was under the impression we were friends.  He had been confronted by the bishop (our local church leader) about something that had been said, and Joe was stuck defending himself and me about something he knew nothing about.  In truth, I knew nothing about it either, and her words blind sided me since I had no idea she was saying things about me to others...  I was upset, and hurt, and beyond embarrassed.  Though I am sure there is a grain of truth to almost everything she said, there was also a whole lot of pure fiction.  Once again, this info is not the point so I will skip ahead a bit.  I was MORTIFIED by what had been said about me.  I remember walking in to my ward building and wondering how many women in there had heard these stories, and thought ill of me.  How many of them saw me taking the sacrament each week and thought I shouldn't have been.  How many of them hated me without even knowing the real me... I was near tears for MONTHS at the thought of going to church activities and spending time with other ward members...  I was so embarrassed, and for the first time in my life I could understand how someone could be too embarrassed to go to church.  How someone could hurt you so badly that rather than defend yourself, you would prefer to hide.

Eventually, I got over it.  It helped when the accuser moved out of the neighborhood, and therefore out of the ward.  I still have no idea who has heard the rumors of me and my family, and I also have no idea how many of them believe it.  What I do know is that there are still plenty in the ward...  I still struggle from time to time with this, and though I have been doing my best to rise above it, I don't always succeed.

I have forgiven this girl for how I was treated, and I have worked very hard to not put myself in such a vulnerable position again.  I am working toward being over this whole ordeal, and though I am no longer struggling with the embarrassment, what Bob said to Sunny struck a cord (chord?).  My family deserves to be with me in church.  I deserve to be at church.  I can't reach my full potential without His help, and I can't get all the help I am worthy of without church attendance. I shouldn't put my church attendance on the shoulders of those who would scoff at me.  I should go because my family knows the true me, and they are the ones that matter.  God knows the truth.  Christ knows the truth.  My husband knows the truth.  I shouldn't avoid church because some people who are not eternally significant might judge me for something I may or may not have said or done.  I am so glad I chose to keep going, because after I heard Bob last night, I think the guilt may have gotten the better of me if I had chosen to let strangers and would be enemies keep me from my eternal purpose.

Just something to think about...

Annoyances...

I was doing my grocery shopping last week (as in October 3rd) and look at what I saw on the shelves at Walmart...

NOT COOL.  Its barely October!

This last weekend I made Cinnamon Rolls.  I made two trays.  One for us, and one I WAS gonna give to neighbors.  But then Matthew (in all his cute glory) found the tray of rolls...  and this is what he did:

Kinda hard to see in the first shot, but almost ALL of the rolls have the centers picked out of them.  And three of them have more than half of the roll missing from the inside out... Darn cute kid. Looks like we have  A LOT of rolls to eat ourselves.

Lacey!

Lacey is at such a fantastic stage of life right now.  Just about everything she does is funny...  Or cute.  Or both.  

Some Lace-ism's for ya:

LACEY: Mom, where are we going?

ME: To run errands

LACEY:  Oh...okay.

(at the first stop, a neighbor's house to drop some stuff off the neighbor opened the door...)

LACEY: Are you Erin?

ME: Huh?

LACEY: Mom, you said we were running to Erins!

Lacey comes to me in the kitchen

LACEY: Mom, can I have the last of the juice?

ME: No.  The juice in your cup is your last.  There isn't much left for everyone else.

LACEY: Okay...

Lacey returns to the backyard and yells to Lilia,

LACEY: Lilia... Mom says the last of the juice is for ME!

My sleepy girl...

Lacey loves Tangled.  The other day she was eating a peach when she took two of the slices and did a little "Tangled" reenactment with them (with her own little twist).  One peach said to the other, "I want to leave the tower" in a high pitched voice. Then the other peach said, " The outside world is a dangerous place.  You can never leave this tower!"

Then, the first peach said, "I will go anyway!" and proceeded to leave the tower.  After a minute of "walking" across the table Lacey said in a deep rough voice, "Gotcha!" and took a bite of the Rapunzel peach.  

The other peach said, "Mother knows best!"

I was online shopping when a sidebar popped up with women in skimpy dresses (I wasn't buying dresses- just shoes) Lacey saw all the models wearing the dresses and exclaimed, "Oh! Look at all the Barbies! I want one of those Barbies... I want the Rainbow Barbie!" (pointing at one of the girls dressed in a multi-colored SHORT dress)  Seems barbies are associated with scantily clad skinny models...

Lacey's recent hair cut...  Back view before:

and after:

Front before:

and after:  (the pictures aren't the best, but we added layers to give her curls and hair more body) 

There is a picture of a globe in blue and white that takes you to the "Browser Properties" page online. It takes you off of your current webpage (read: game).  Lacey was running her mouse along all the different programs on her desktop, naming them off one by one, and when she crossed this one she cryptically whispered, "The Evil Egg of DOOM."

I was getting ready to make jam with my niece and told her, "Okay- I will put Matthew down for his nap, crank up the AC, and we will be off!"  

Lacey looked at me with a horrified face and said, "Crank up ME?!  No!"  

 The same noodle place that our family loves, this is how Lacey eats her noodles...

Lacey: Mom, you need to fire the candle before we eat the cupcakes! (Light them) 

Me: (looking at the cupcake) You're FIRED! Eat up Lacey.  

(Okay so that last one was more a funny on my part- at least my neighbor and I were laughing at it...)