Happy Birthday?

I am a week in writing this post.  Shame on me.  :(  My baby turned two last Saturday.  I am both happy and sad all in one.

Happy, of course because this great bright spot in my life has been burning so strong for over two years now.

Sad because he is growing so fast, and I can't seem to make him stop long enough for me to really take in the losing of my baby and the gaining of a curiously busy toddler.

He is such a cute, funny, intense, and silly little man.  He has won over the hearts of more than one momma I know.  He is smart - he can count to irteen (right after quelve), knows most colors, some letters, and recognizes certain numbers by sight.

He loves his Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and has memorized the catch phrases and names of all the characters.  He sings and dances the hot dog dance, and can accurately do the "roll call" from the beginning of the show.  He has recently been introduced to Handy Manny and Chuggington, and is a fan of all things that are round, bounce, have wheels, say vroom, and/or choo-choo, and that can be stacked...  Or in other words, all vehicles, balls and blocks.

Now- the reason I am a week late in writing this... the poor little man is so darn sick!  Right at his birthday last week he got croup.  A pretty nasty case of it, to be sure.  Just as the croup was ending he started in with a VERY runny nose.  It's been so bad he now has sores under and around his nose from all the nose wiping.   3 days in to that he starts getting what starts out as a small cough and progresses to a full blown, chest rattling, productive cough.  Then comes the pink eye.  OH how I hate pink.  And green.  Coming out of his eyes. And nose...  ick.  Poor little monkey!  To top all of that off, the little guy woke up in the middle of the night tonight with a 103 degree temperature.  Will this little man catch a break this season?!  I sit here typing this at nearly midnight in hopes that the Children's Motrin will kick in any minute and he will be asleep again when I go to check on him in a few minutes.

 

As for the 2 year stats, he is still 10th percentile in height and weight and 75th in head circumference.  :)  If there is any truth to be had over the theory that doubling the child's height at their second birthday will tell you how tall they will be as adults, then he will be 5'8" when he grows up.  That would make him taller than his daddy by 2 inches.  No matter how he turns out, I will love him all the same.  Happy late 2nd Birthday to my very favorite son!  I love you Matthew!

For a Good Cause!

So I have decided to do something drastic.  And fun.  And more than a little dirty....

I am signing up to do the Kiss Me Dirty Race this August!  I am pretty excited about it.  The specs?

It's a 5k "race" for women and girls over the age of 10.  It is not a timed race, it is purely for fun.  Also, it is an obstacle course full of mud!  A small portion of the registration fee goes directly to gynecological cancer research through Huntsman Cancer Foundation.  Having one sister who was diagnosed and successfully treated for ovarian cancer, and having another sister who had a close call scare with ovarian cancer has made this race very personal for me.  Also, I have always wanted to get into running and figure this is a good way to ease in.  You are encouraged to wear costumes (awards will be given to the best three cocktail dresses, as well as the best three women's product costumes ie. tube of lipstick or mascara), but don't have to.  There will be tubes to crawl through, nets to crawl under, things to hurtle, mud bogs to wade through...  There is no award for speed, and no time chips will be handed out.  All in all, it's a fun time to be had by all!

The details, including a map of the course

I am pretty excited, and would love to extend this invitation to any of my female friends interested in joining me.   Also, I am raising funds to help the cause.  PLEASE go donate if you can! Any amount helps!

Pam's Fundraiser Donation Site

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...