Love Is In The Air

I love February, mostly because I love Valentine's Day.  It's true, I totally love Valentine's Day.  I think maybe it's the 14 year old girl in me...you know, the little thrills you get when you hope that the guy you like totally gives you a Valentine?  It's just such a cute holiday, and I get to make treats and hang cute pink and red decorations all around my house.  I love it.  And I don't dig V-Day haters.  You know the ones who think it's just a big hype from the card companies?  Yeah, we all know them.  The ones who say love should be celebrated every day and not just on Valentines Day?  Well, yeah, love totally should be celebrated every day, but sometimes we have holidays to make things special!  It's like saying you hate Christmas because Christ should be celebrated every day....while it's true, Christmas is a celebration!  Lighten up a bit, people!  So, there you have it.  Valentine's Day is wonderful.

This little cutie-patootie.  She makes my heart melt every single day.  I am loving who she is becoming.  She loves her daddy, and she loves her brother and sister, but she LOVES her mama, and that melts my heart even more.  She saves her biggest smiles for me.

 I can't say as though I'm the best at being crafty with my kids....but every so often, I have a moment, and I totally rock it...like making these rocket-ships.  Paper towel tubes, and construction paper...boom, instant rocket ship.  Owen and I raced rocket ships around our front yard that day, that was a good moment, he's my buddy, I love my boy.

 My little Rosie, I like to put her in the walker so she can have some 'sitting up' time...but she's not so fond of it because I think she feels forgotten about!

 This kid.  He is wonderful,  My Krispy-Kreme superhero!

 My husband's best friend has a son, Bronson, who happens to be Owen's best friend.  Those two together are hilarious.  They are three months apart and best buds.

 I've been working really hard at making good food choices, and for the past six weeks and it's been amazing how my stomach has adjusted to the food.  I have a free day each week to eat whatever I want (which is typically Saturday), and at the end of the day, I feel sick!  I can't eat the kind of food I used to anymore...which is great.  The progress is super slow, but I know the changes will come, they just take forever when I'm breastfeeding.  The hospital makes a super delish salmon, so that's what I'll get if it's on the menu.

 My favorite breakfast; two slices of canadian bacon with one scrambled egg on top of a piece of toast with half an avocado.  LOVE it. 

 I love these wax hearts.  They are a pain in the neck to make; just a lot of steps that tend to be tedious, but they are totally worth it and CUTE!

 These three are awesome, I totally love my kids, and they are hilarious.  Sunday morning pictures!

 Take 2:

 Take 3:  There it is!I

 I made chocolate dipped pretzels for a bunch of people last week, and it turned out to be a bigger project than I anticipated!  BUT, look how cute they turned out!

 And, yeah, there were a ton!

 I should have taken pictures of all the baggies I put together.  I ended up with nine treat bags, and I wrote cards for each one.  I had some leftover handouts from a Relief Society presentation I gave the other week on service.  It has typed on it a poem quoted from President Monson which I have memorized:

"I have wept in the night, for the shortness of sight, that to somebody's need made me blind.  But I never have yet, felt a tinge of regret, for being a little too kind.".

It's been such a great reminder to me on the value of service.  Big or small, our kindness always makes a difference.

 My sweet husband was so nice to help me make all those pretzels.  Next year though, I'm going for the big pretzel sticks, not as much work!

 I made some Asian turkey lettuce wraps the other night for dinner, they were SO good!  Owen ate four of them!

 Our cat is not an adventurous cat, but she likes to sit at the window and watch the birds on the tree and imagine that she is.

 I posted the picture of the shelves already, but Kris finished the can dispenser for me this past week.  I love it, it frees up so much shelf space! 

 Marin stole my phone and snapped this picture of Owen.  I love it, this is totally a candid shot of him being happy.

Something Called January

We're almost through with January, I can hardly believe it!  The biggest change has been my return to work, which has been wonderful!  I learned after I had Owen and we moved to Utah that after staying home with my kids full time for nine months.....I need to work.  My brain needs it.  I balances me and I am a much happier and a much better mother when I can work a few hours.  

Even with knowing all of that, the first day can be a bit anticipatory, and my visiting teachers were super sweet and dropped off a back-to-work survival kit: chocolates, a candle, earplugs, chapstick, a roll of quarters (to phone home, haha!).  It was so awesome.

 Aaah yes, I've missed this place.  I love working at Primary Children's...pediatrics is my niche.

 Lub lub da baby chubb!  I can't exactly say my milk is cream...or even whole milk, it's more like 2% I think, so my babies never get super duper fat, but that's ok.  This girl here has been putting it all into her length, though....she's tall!

 Having three kids, at least the adjustment, can feel like a three ring circus some nights.  And Sunday nights are no exception.  Kris was getting clobbered from all angles!

 We had a full house on afternoon.  My friend from the ward asked me to take a look at her son's lip to see if he needed stitches, which he did; so I watched two of her four boys for her while she took him in, and Marin's friend from the next street down came over to play.  Five kids and a baby to boot, yikes!  The kids had a great time though.

 My uber cool hubby built me some food storage shelves in the basement.  We have a small, 400sq ft portion of our basement level that is unfinished, and my food storage shelves in the garage were bursting at the seams, so he built me these.  They are wonderful, and I had the BEST time organizing them, seriously.  I like to just stand down there and stare at my shelves.  I love them!  Now, Kris is working on a can dispenser for me, to free up some of that shelf space.  I'll have to take pics when he's done.

 We've been trying so hard to eat healthy around here, and dinner one night was fresh salmon, SO good!

 Sweet Rosalie has been figuring out how to work those hands of hers, and she found daddy's scruffy face one evening.  She just couldn't get enough, she kept reaching up to feel it.

 I made the most giant pan of lasagna I think I've ever seen one night!  It was for a lady in our ward who has six of her adult children living in her home right now PLUS grandkids!  She never asks for help and was in a car collision recently, and I didn't tell her I was bringing this, she started crying when I showed up!  The pan was so big, it barely fit in my oven!

 I cannot even believe how big my Marin is getting, seriously.  What a grown up girl, and such a sweetheart!  She makes me so proud.  At six years of age, she blows me away with how wonderful she is. 

 When you have a girl and a boy in the house, sometimes playtime can be a bit....frustrating...explosive....non-existent....but there *are* times when they do play well together.  I just love seeing little things like this, it makes me smile.

 OK, Marin has the flattest, thinnest, straightest hair there is, and I totally struggle with what to with it, because it just hang in her face, mostly.  So, I tried some foam rollers on a good word and a why-not attitude, and picked up two packs at the dollar store.  I was shocked at how well they came out!  Look how full and wavy her hair is!!  I need some for ME...except I would NEVER hear the end of it from my hubby, haha!

 For now, I'll just use the old curling iron!

 I need to be snapping some more pics for another post!

Christmas 2014

Let's get to work, phew!  Mama is so behind on her blogging!  Christmas this year was all quiet on the home front, and it was nice.  Just us as a little family at home, so relaxing.

I wanted to make each of my kids something this year...something I hope to do every year.  So this year, I made Marin a crayon cozy for her crayons.  You roll it up and tie it with a ribbon, and I wanted to make it specifically for her to take to church....and each crayon has it's own little space, something she *loves*!  We actually found a 16 pack of mini markers and use those instead, except they are a bit more slippery and fall out a little more easily.  I made some no-sew capes for Owen...mostly because I had watched him more times than one, run around the house with a plastic shopping bag looped around his shoulders for a cape.  So I made him a leaf man cape (from Epic), Superman and Batman.  They turned our ridiculously cute, and I was pretty proud of myself, to be honest.  I only wished he used them more!!  And I made some super cute headbands for Rosalie, I loved making them, and I *love* putting them on her!

 Peaches, our cat in the box!

 Such a pretty sky on Christmas Eve.

 And yes, that's my barefoot daughter in the white shirt.

Our cute little house on Christmas Eve, it always seems a bit more magical.

 And would you believe, we woke up to snow and had a white Christmas!!  It was perfect!

 Two VERY excited kids on Christmas Eve. 

My sweet kids made monkey bread for Santa (a tradition), left carrots for the reindeer, and some maple syrup and chocolate rocks for Nicholas, our elf.

 After Christmas sales are the bomb, you can actually afford to buy Christmas stuff!  BUT, I was out shopping Christmas Eve morning, and Hancock Fabrics had already started their sales, so I picked up a few decorations for CHEAP.  I love them!

 

The faces of my kids on Christmas morning...just the best ever.  They'll only have that magic for so long before it fades, so I want it to be magical for them.

 Marin got a volleyball....we'll be using that this upcoming summer, for sure!

We had to put a bow on Rosie...we just had to.

 The spoils.  For each of the kids, one of the best gift ideas we had was to go to DI and raid their kids books section.  Each kid received a stack of about 20 books....which was desperately needed, and they LOVE having new books to look at, and we LOVE not having the brand new price tag!

 Christmas Day with a little candle.

Santa brought each of the kids a game...also a great gift idea.  Owen received Mouse Trap, and Marin received Monopoly JR.  It's been so fun playing board games with them, we love that they are old enough to do that now.

 My sweet little baby, she is so precious!

Oh, seriously, look at my cutie girl. 

 Ah!  I can hardly stand it!  She saves her biggest smiles for mama, and it totally melts my heart.  It's been a looong time coming though.  After 10 weeks of colicky, crying, miserable, awful-ness, Rosalie turned a corner and has become the most pleasant, smiling, lovely baby.  Still very particular, but she is just wonderful, we LOVE her!

 My oldest.  Marin has such a sweet heart.  She made lunch for daddy one day, a PB sandwich, a cheese stick and some berries.  She took it to him in his office downstairs.

How I think my legs look in the wintertime.....

 We may or may not need a new toaster.....ours doesn't stay, so we have to jam a wooden utensil in there to trip the switch.

December has been full of ups and downs, but we are so happy to start a new year and move forward with so MANY things!