Thursday, December 31, 2009

last day of 2009....

2 hours and 33 min left in 2009! what a wonderful year it has been! i always look forward to new beginnings......i'm ready for 2010!

one of my goals for 2010 is to "officially" get back to my pre-pregnancy weight! now, the thing about that is i haven't seen my pre-pregnancy weight since 2001, 5 pregnancies, and 6 babies ago! i can no longer use the excuse that "i just had twins". they are almost 14 mo old! so, i have been thinking about this and trying to figure out how to hold myself accountable. this is it! i am going to post and write about it.....

here it is.....i want to shed about 60 pounds and i want to do that by june 2, which is my 35th birthday! how am i going to do it? i have a bodybugg, i am a member of 2 gyms, i do the medifast weight lose program, i have wii fit plus and the biggest loser wii program! the question is, do i have the will power to stick to it????? i'm thinking 10 pounds a month is completely doable! 21 weeks! THIS IS THE YEAR!

this is going to be a big year for our family! gracie turns 8 years old this year! joseph and i celebrate our 10 year anniversary! travelling to florida to celebrate one of my best friends biggest days! going to my parents for christmas! and that's not including all of the birthdays, work accomplishments, church and school activities, mini vacations, etc! it's going to be a year full of excitement, personal and family growth, and unexpected adventures!

35 more minutes......i think i will go and eat something sinful! happy new year!

ChRiStMaS.....

what a wonderful christmas we had!





Sunday, December 20, 2009

the most wonderful time of the year!!!

i love this time of the year! i love the decorations, the food, the memories, the traditions. i love the spirit of CHRISTMAS! i love sitting in my living room with only the christmas lights on, christmas music playing softly in the background, and the smell of apple-cinnamon coming from the kitchen! i love watching my little people as they look out the windows of our car and scream with delight when they see other peoples decorations!!! this is truly a magical time of the year!


there has been a lot going on in our house over the past few weeks! the twins turned "1" on november 3rd! yes.....we all made it through the first year! they are coming into their own now! it has been so much fun to watch them grow and to see their different personalities come through! i love walking in on them and watching them talk to one another! they are wonderful!
what would we do without such a HUGE surprise! here are cardin and maxwell's 1 yr old birthday pics!
josephs mom and dad were able to come and spend a couple of weeks with us over the thanksgiving holiday. while they were here, joseph and i were able to take a few days and travel together by ourselves! it's so nice to have/take the time to reconnect with one another! i often get thrown back 15 years to when we first started dating and the feelings that i had for him then.......and how they have multiplied a million times more! it's like de ja vue when it is just he and i! i am so grateful for time we get together!

my grandfather had been declining for several months......3 weeks ago we received word that he had cancer and that time was very short. i had to make the decision to go and see him while he was still with us or wait until after he passed and attend the services. i chose to go and visit with him and to make sure he new how much i loved him! it was so hard to see him! he had fallen a few weeks earlier and was literally bruised from head to toe....he looked so weak and tired. while i was there, hospice was called in and he quickly became non-responsive. i left on a wednesday and my paw paw passed away that sunday. it was so hard to be away! sometimes living 3500 miles from "home" can be very difficult! joseph encouraged me to go back for the services if i wanted too......i had said my goodbye's and shared my feeling with him while i sat with him! i am so grateful for the gospel of Jesus Christ in my life. i know that there is a plan for each one of us. i know that our loved ones LIVE! i am comforted to know that our paw paw was greeted and escorted to the hereafter by someone who loved him and who he loved very much! i am so grateful for family connections and that my parents chose and encouraged us to have bounding relationships with our grandparents and our extended family members! it is truly a great gift and has been a wonderful blessing in my life! what a wonderful time for paw paw to return to our heavenly home!

gracie has informed joseph and i that, and i quote, "this christmas is going to be a disaster"! we have both asked her why she feels that way and she has informed us that because no one will be here with us and because we will not be somewhere else with family, it is just not going to be good! how funny it is that our 7 yr old knows that christmas is about family! we have never spent a christmas without grandparents and/or cousins, aunts, uncles, etc with us! this is going to be a first! though i will miss not sharing this sweet time with our parents, my eyes are being opened to the 8 of us spending our first christmas together together (if that makes any sense)!

anyway, i have rambled on long enough! i am excited for 2010! it is going to be such a busy year with great opportunity and growth for us all! i am thinking about the things that i want to focus on individually, as a family, as a wife, as a mother.....i get rejuvenated with the new year ahead!

we hope that you may all have a very merry christmas and that we may remember the birth of our Savior, who is the reason we celebrate!!! how wonderful it is to have the knowledge the He lives!!!!

Thursday, August 13, 2009

V.A.C.A.T.I.O.N........

when i say the word VACATION, i think of joseph and i sitting on the beach somewhere under an umbrella watching our six ashen white, 70 spf coated children frolicking in the sand....when i think of VACATION, i think of sleeping late in the morning, eating brunch out, sitting around and talking for hours, no plans, no agenda, watching movies, staying up late. my definition of VACATION: a break from the everyday...time to "enjoy" one another and the scenery around you.....lazy days!

we have been on VACATION since the end of july......we have driven hundreds of miles through at least five states (so far). we have been woken up at the crack of dawn.....i'm talking daybreak, since we left, and at least twice a night and not only by the twins. we have cleaned up throw up in every state we have been in, on every surface imaginable.....and lets not talk about the diarrhea that has accompanied that.....i am talking about every day since we pulled out of our driveway! i have sat in an urgent care and in the hospital, holding two of my girls down, trying to comfort them, as they got their first IV. i have heard my name called more in the past few weeks then i have two months at home. joseph has been traveling....that's all i have to say about that. i am sleep deprived, honory, strained!

did i mention we are on VACATION?

oh the memories we are making! one day we will all laugh about this......the upside is that i have been able to spend time with my family (parents and siblings). i was able to reconnect with one of my cousins. i have been able to see one of my dearest friends. our children are all here with us...they don't feel good, but they are here. we have seen and experienced yellowstone and saw old faithful blow!

it may not be ideal but it is our VACATION.....together!

Sunday, June 21, 2009

fathers......

i couldn't let this day pass without writing about two very important men in my life. i have been blessed with two grandfathers, many uncles, cousins, brother in laws, one father in law, and a brother who have/are wonderful men. they have been a huge part of my life growing up and into my adulthood. my life has been blessed because these men, who have played different roles, are in it!

today i am grateful for my dad. when i think about my dad, there are many characteristics that come to my mind. my dad is a hard worker. he has always provided for his family. he has put us first and foremost in all instances. my dad is loyal, loving, shy when you first meet him, stubborn, considerate, prayerful, intimidating, jovial, thoughtful, straight forward, playful, happy. my dad is one of the most spiritual people i know. he sees no fault in others. he is a leader. he has supported me through my life changing events: college, mission, marriage. he is a comforter, a protector, a honorable priesthood holder. i have watched him become a "granddaddy". he is the senior patriarch in our family. he is my dad!

i am also grateful for joseph. he is my other half, the one that completes me, my eternal companion. i am in awe of his accomplishments. among them, the six children that we share together. he is so good to them. he celebrates every day that we are all together. he is their protector, playmate, provider, teacher, disciplinary, helpmate, best friend, tball coach, driver, lunch buddy, wii companion, movie night instigator, golfing teacher, wrestling partner, music loving, photographer. he feels their joy and their heartache. he is the sun in their sky and the light in their darkness. i think many days he underestimates his importance in their lives but without him they would be empty. their laughter and their joyful spirits are drawn to their daddy. i am so grateful for his example in their lives as well as mine. I'm grateful for his loyalty to our family, to his children. i am grateful for the righteous priesthood holder that he is......that he can call upon our Heavenly Father in our children's behalf. he is so special in so many ways!

today i celebrate my dad and my husband! i celebrate the men you are and the ones that you will become. i celebrate the stages of life we have shared together and that we will share together! i am glad that we our bound together through eternities! i love you both very much!

happy fathers day!

Sunday, May 31, 2009

accident prone.....

today was not a very good day for gracie! i guess not only today, but the whole week! at jacksons tball game, gracie decided she wanted to go and play on the playground instead of watching jackson play......as any child would! she was playing on the monkey bars with another little boy who happened to have cleats on! long story short, he kicked her in the face and BUSTED her lip wide open, laid one of her front teeth straight back on her palate, chipped the tooth beside the front tooth, and bruised her chin pretty good. the child denied ever kicking her!! this past thursday at baseball practice, one of her team mates decided to throw the ball to gracie while she was trying to get her glove on her hand and hit her dead center in the chest and the ball bounced up and hit her in the neck/chin area! those two incidents are two of many! the child has bruises up and down her body! i feel so bad for her!

Sunday, May 10, 2009

mothers.....

i am so grateful for all the mothers in my life! i have dear friends who are not yet mothers, but who are wonderful examples of how a woman should be in preparing to become a mom! i have friends who are exceptional mothers. they show me new and interesting was to parent and to "be" with my children. i've had 2 grandmothers who led the way in organizing and binding many families together to become one. i have 6 aunts who have been a constant in my life.......13 cousins (girls) who are raising 30 children between them all.......3 sister in laws, who teach me daily by their mistakes and accomplishments........my mother in law, who works so hard and loves so intently that she encompasses all who come in contact with her . missy, my sweet sister, who travels the road of motherhood with me.......and my mom!

there is not a day that goes by where i don't think about my mom. i talk to her almost everyday! growing up i remember my mom doing so much for me......i don't think i understood exactly what went into raising 3 children until i had children of my own. she was always the one who would tuck me in at night, comfort me when sick, buy the clothes that i had to have, take me for special outings. daily she gave 100% of herself to make sure that i was happy, safe, and loved! even through the teenage years where i pushed every button she had, she was diligent, prayerful, constant! my mom is kind, happy, loving, talented, soft spoken, funny, artistic, creative, gentle, caring, bright, honest, peaceful, compassionate, hardworking, selfless, fashionable, current, a wonderful cook, educated, fluent, vibrant, colorful, witty, spiritual, forgiving lady. there aren't enough words to describe my mom! she is a southern belle, daughter, sister, aunt, wife, gamma. she is my example, my sounding board, my motivator, my friend.........she is my mother! if i am half the mother that my mom is then i will have greatly succeeded!

i honor my mom and all the wonderful woman in my life who buoy me up and who have gone before me and walk with me in this journey of motherhood!

i am so grateful to be a mom! it is one of the hardest, most exhilarating, trying experiences that i have ever had! 4 of the kids have been sick today but they all did their best to make me feel very special. i was treated to wonderful handmade gifts, white roses, a scrumptious dinner with dessert, a long nap, and lots of hugs and kisses!

i feel very humbled to be given such a wonderful responsibility of being a mom!

Thursday, May 7, 2009

jacksons preschool mothers day program!

today was an exciting day for jackson and i! it is not very often that i get to go and be with one of the children by themselves. joseph came home late last night so that i could attend jacksons preschool mothers day program. standing back and watching him helps me to remember just how little he really is! in our home, he is the second oldest and so sometimes i forget that he is only 5 and a young 5 at that! there are 16 children in his class.......each one had a special part! jackson was a rooster in one song and said "cock-a-doodle-doo" and then he held up a picture of monkeys and said, "little monkeys have a mom to show them monkey shines" (that was part of a rhyme)! they danced and sang and recited poems! i think that my favorite part of the program was when 6 of the children held up the letters M-O-T-H-E-R and sang a song that went with each letter.......the words were something like this:

M is for the money you spend on me
O is for the open doors i leave
T is for the time you give to me
H is for the hand prints on the wall
E is for the early morning rises
R is for the runny nose you wipe
put them all together, they spell MOTHER!
Mother is the one i truly love!

they each frosted two flower shaped cookies and gave us a personally painted pot with a plant (jackson proudly reminds me that the plant is a marigold.....for all of those who are like me who have no clue about plants) with a homemade card in it! it was great! my only regret is that my camera/recorder ran out of juice!

jackson has grown so much! he is such a little man......so kind and considerate of others! he gets excited about everything and when he looks at you with those big baby blues, all i want to do is melt! he is in a wonderful place right now! his preschool teacher is fantastic and so are all of his friends and their families! it is good to be a mom today! thanks jackson for such a sweet gift!


Friday, April 17, 2009

ice breaker sours

i took the kids to the Y yesterday for swimming classes. as i was trying to get jackson checked into the nursery so i could get ela to her mommy and me class and gracie to her class, i heard this high pitched, fingernails down the chalkboard, blood curling scream. i quickly realized that it was ela! she was standing two inches from this poor, innocent 2 year old tiny little boy who's mother was trying to get him into the nursery as well. so my thought is, maybe he bit her or pulled her hair or threw her against the wall (not really) or something to get such a terrifying scream to rip from her mouth like she did! no, no, no......it's not that logical! ela had a tiny ice breaker sour in each one of her hands that i had given her before we got in the car to come to the Y. she held out her hand to show the tiny little "friend" and he took it from her and put it in his mouth! when she started screaming, he opened his mouth, the sour went tumbling to the floor, and he was climbing his mothers leg before you could blink an eye! ela was so upset! the little boy cried for quit sometime, even after he was in the nursery and i am sure that ela has scared him for at least a month or two! sad thing is, we see this little boy and his mom almost every day we go to the Y! talking about trauma!

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

i would like to thank....

first of all, let me begin by telling you that we do have 5 other children besides ela and i do love them all equally and unconditionally. i know that in the future there will be many things to say and share about them all at any given time, but i need to pay homage to our ela! she's earned it!

so.....it seems like forever ago (it's been about 8 months now), we started talking potty training with ela. we talked and we demonstrated and we begged and pleaded and bribed and scolded and gave high fives and flushed just to watch the water go down and chanted her name while she sat on the potty and cleaned up accidents all over the house and reminded her that she gets to go to pre-school when she pees in the potty and begged and pleaded some more! now i can say, by gosh i think she has it! i didn't want to say anything before now but the child has gone 5 whole days with no accidents AND has worn her big girl panties everywhere, even out of the house, AND has even been frustrated with herself when she has woken up in the morning and peed in her pull up!!!! IT IS TRULY A MIRACLE!!!

i don't think that you can possibly understand where all of this is coming from unless you know our history. ela is the first child that joseph and i have actually potty trained! my mother-in-law, aka ma-maw to the kids, watched gracie and jackson most of the time while i worked in north carolina and therefor took care of the nitty gritty details of potty training for us.......did we ever say thank you for that wonderful gift? living across the country now, she couldn't do that for us......SOOOOOOO,


i would like to thank the academy for this nomination for the "first time potty training and actually succeeding" award. it was many days and nights of crawling around on the floor with a bottle of resolve in one hand and a scrub brush in the other trying to find the latest accident that miss ela did "last year". i would like to thank first and foremost, joseph, for his constant reminding that one day she will get it......that is what you call faith! i would also like to thank, ma-maw and gamma (my mom) for the many weeks that they spent one on four and then one on six while i was on bedrest and recovering from our latest additions! if it weren't for the two of you ela would have no one else as equally excited as she is to share her fun news with! last but not least, i would like to thank ela for actually doing it!

ela was paid in full the other day with the bribe of all bribes for a 3 year old in training. she picked out her very own surprise dora baby doll and a pack of 7 pairs of brand new dora panties! hey, we do what we have to do! desperate times call for desperate measures!

3 down, 3 to go!

Saturday, April 4, 2009

In her own form, Ela celebrates the victory!

Friday, April 3, 2009

our third child....

so......as many of you know, of our 6 little darlings, ela is our "independent" one! every family has one, right? she is the one who can push my buttons in a second flat! she constantly has something new and interesting to say, she has one volume which is LOUD, and she is not afraid of anything! if we were to open the front door, she would run out and never look back, which by the way, she has done and i have ran out after her many a day. this is the child who decided to climb up in the playroom window last summer and bounce on the screen like it was a trampoline, the whole time laughing like she was at an amusement park having the time of her life. mind you, the playroom is on the second floor of our house and thus the window is too! when i came around the corner and saw my then two year old lunging herself into the screen again and again and again my heart stopped and my blood went cold! this is the same child who can sing every letter of the alphabet with a animal name attached: alligator, bat, cat, dog, elephant.......the other day we stopped to let a bus full of high school students cross the road and of coarse they are going to get out one by one, right behind each other, and ela says, "why are they playing follow the leader? can i be the leader one day?" when she gets up in the morning she proclaims to the world,"i slept last year! i had good breams!" she is the one that you go looking for when things are to quite! i have found her pouring water out of the toilet with her shoe all over the floor so she could go swimming. she loves to climb up on the sink and put soap on her fingers and draw all over the mirror. i have found her at the bottom of the stairs with 12 peeled bananas lined up neatly with the peels flung all over the living room! she is the one who will change her clothes 15 times a day just because she can! and all of that has happened in just one day! this child likes to run out in the middle of a parking lot not turning to see if a car is coming or heaven forbid listening to the frantic screaming from her mother to "Stop"! If you chase her she just runs faster! ela thinks that everyday should be her birthday.....she likes to tell me what her cake should look like; normally it is purple with blue pokadots! ela refers to her brothers and sisters as her "friends"! she thinks that her gamma and her ma maw are "the breast cookers ever"! she is her daddy's biggest fan and i think that she secretly knows that she has him wrapped so tightly around her little finger that no matter what she does all she has to do is bat those big baby blues at him and he is going to melt right in the palm of her hand! our ela is one of a kind!






the whole point of me telling you this is right before she went to bed tonight, she came up to me and said,"mommy, i lub you so much! you are the breastest mommy ever! will you always be my breast friend?" she is something else!

heavenly father certainly broke the mold when He sent her to us......at least we hope so! not only for our sakes, but for everyone else as well!

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

who has time????

i like to think of myself as one who doesn't follow the crowd or isn't influenced by the latest happening thing that is going on.....that said, since about mid september, i have jumped on the bandwagon for alot of crazes. the first was reading the twilight series. i swore up and down that i was not going to get involved with a bunch of vampires and then i was put in the hospital on bedrest and given the book by a friend to help pass time. it sat there and stared at me for 2 days....then i picked it up and read the first chapter and that was it! i couldn't put the book down nor could i stop myself from reading the other 3 in the series. then i was invited by several friends to join facebook! i barely have time to eat during the day and people are inviting me to join facebook......what is facebook? my curiosity got the best of me and i joined and instead of getting much needed sleep at night, i have to see if anything has changed on facebook before i can close my eyes! so sad! that brings me to this point.......BLOGGING! i love to read other peoples blogs, i think it's a fun idea, i swore that i would never have a blog myself because when would i have time to sit down and blog? blah, blah, blah! and here i am.....it's 12:07 am and i am trying to figure this whole blog thing out! we'll see how it goes!

if anyone decides to read this and is curious about our world.......WELCOME! i hope i can keep up with it all! here goes nothing.......