Deep thought, not Jack Handey but the real thing

So, lately my posts have been just pictures of my kids, but I just had a deep thought that I would like to write about. "Your kids wouldn't blame you every time they fell down learning how to roller skate, so why should we assume that tragedy isn't "supposed to" happen." By supposed to I mean that God allows tragedy to happen the same way we let our kids fall down when they are learning how to rollerskate. I had a discussion with an old friend of mine a while ago where I implied that something bad that had happened was "all part of the plan" when she expressed her thought that her mother and my sister weren't supposed to die young. That that is not what Heavenly Father wanted to have happen. I don't believe that He wanted it to happen anymore than we want our kids to get all bruised up roller skating, but we know it will probably happen and we don't prevent it by not allowing them to roller skate. Maybe it is her way of saying "We can't blame God for their deaths." Which I agree with, we can't, and I never did for a minute, but have accepted that bad things do happen, and it is OK, albeit difficult near to impossible for us to deal with.
For me this was an epiphany, becasue at the time, months ago, I didn't know how to respond to her.

I guess what is so hard to deal with when someone dies prematurely, is that we had plans for a future with them, and now our plans ave been altered, and we miss them, even if we know they are in a better place. Everytime I see a couple with thier cute kids where the wife is Asian and the husband is blond, I think that that should have been Sarah. The house we bought was owned by a Korean family and a couple times when I drove by, their kids were playing in the yard, and it was like a flashback to Peter and Sarah, playing together. I guess I am not done greiving, but I don't want to ever be either. So if you see a crazy blond lady crying in the gocery store in line behind Korean people, that is me. I am thinking about watching all of the movies from Sarah's list of favorite movies on her blog. What do you think? Anyone want to join me.

Mini Golf

Here are some shots from the miniature golfing adventure that Grandma Svetlana took us on.

Butterflies

Adriana had me order some caterpillars to watch turn into butterflies and here are some pictures of the day we released them.






Adriana had me order some caterpillars to watch turn into butterflies and here are some pictures of the day we released them.

Ariel's Baptism

In the weeks leading up to Ariel's baptism on several occasions it really hit me that as much as we love and cherish Ariel and are grateful that she is part of our family and that she is alive, her life doesn't belong to us, we have the privilege of being a very important part of it, and are doing the best we can to fulfill our responsibilities as parents and set her on the right path, but ultimately she belongs to our Heavenly Father. She was His daughter before she was ours. This perspective is both humbling and motivating. It motivates me to be a better parent and fills me with a sense of purpose and gives meaning to my interactions with her. I am so happy that she chose to follow the Savior and be baptized and confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints. A few years ago I was worried that she might not be prepared for baptism when she was eight, so in the past few months, I pulled out my old missionary "discussions" and went over the basic principles of the Gospel with her and was satisfied with her understanding and impressed with her insights. It has strengthen my testimony in the doctrine that at age eight a person really is ready to be held accountable for their decisions and that they can really grasp deep spiritual principles like repentance and forgiveness.
With the commotion of the day, I didn't manage to get a picture of Ariel and Nikolay in their white clothes before the baptism, but this is right after they changed their clothes (for the second time, Nikolay had missed the word "and" in the baptismal prayer, and they had to change back into their wet clothes and do it again, I was glad to be able to share with Ariel that I had to be baptized 3 times before it was just right because my hair kept floating up) before we headed back to the chapel. The sweet peacefulness and assurance from the Holy Spirit overwhelmed me with a marked impression that this was one of the most important moments in her mortal existence.

So many people came to support Ariel on this special day. I felt an outpouring of love from both family and friends. With all the details that rested on my shoulders as the mom, from inviting people to participate in the program and printing it out, to deciding on and preparing refreshments, to preparing the white clothes for Nikolay and Ariel, I was worried that something wasn't going to go right, but everyone around us pitched in and everything went smoothly and I was able to really enjoy this important day. From my family my parents flew out from Wisconsin, the Miners drove down from Boston, Jacob and Emily hopped on a bus from NYC, and Svetlana flew out from Salt Lake City. For the program Emily and Jacob said the opening and closing prayers, Mom and Dad gave the talks on baptism and the Holy Ghost, Rebekah played the piano and accompanied her girls plus Adriana and Annika for a special musical number. Two of Ariel's friends from school also came, one of which is the daughter of my dear walking friend, and it was so nice to have her there too and get to introduce her to my family. There were also plenty of close friends from our ward who came to support her and share this special day with us.
It was so nice to spend time with our extended family the whole weekend, swimming at the hotel pool, staying up late talking 2 nights in row. And the girls had a ball with their cousins who go to sleep over Saturday night. Friday night Mom, Dad, Emily and Jacob came over when they all got in town and the kids got to show off and goof off with everyone. At one point Mom said that watching my kids interact at this age reminds her of us when we were little.

We went to our favorite park and photo shoot location here in Alburtis, Lock Ridge Park. Ariel just loved spending time with her favorite cousin, Elise.
The kids had a great time playing hide and go seek/tag with Grandpa, and later Jacob.
Dallin and cousin Camille, "hiding" in a doorway of an old stone structure.
The whole crew.
Grandma and Grandpa with eight out of their 14 grandkids.

It was so much fun having Grandma Svetlana stay with us for 3 nights. She really spoiled everyone with gifts and taking us out to eat and miniature golfing, pictures to follow.

Adriana's Birthday

We were watching a nature show about crocodiles and Adriana built this croc out of blocks.
First Adriana wanted to have a butterfly birthday party, but she wanted to invite a few boys, so we decided to have a bug party. This is supposed to be a caterpillar made out of cupcakes.


We had the pinata inside and here is a shot of Nikolay dangling it from a broomstick because we had no place to hang it from. Adriana was the only one who requested a pinata this year, but I made it a little too strong and the kids couldn't bust it open, we had one of the dads eventually whack it.

Another early morning present opening ceremony. It was so hard to shop for Adriana this year because she didn't really want anything, so I just had to really pay attention to what she liked and was interested in and the cool thing is that she was genuinely surprised with her gifts.

My next post will be all about Ariel's baptism, that happened last weekend.

Dallin's birthday

I am posting pictures of Dallin's birthday which was almost 3 weeks ago, and tomorrow I will post Adriana's birthday which was a week ago. I may get back into blogging more often now that we finally have had an offer accepted on a house. This was the third house that we officially made an offer on and there was one other that we wanted to make an offer on but someone else wanted to pay more for it than we did.

The pictures ended up in reverse order, see I am forgetting all my blogging tricks like that you have to load them in reverse order so they come out in the right order.
This year we got him a lot of presents that I have been wanting to get him for a while. Our lack of boy toys was really starting to hit me when I see him putting My Little Ponies down for naps and feeding them with toy dishes and food and carrying around babydolls in their carseats (why does little miss spellchecker think that babydoll and carseat are not legitimate compound words? In my world they are, so I am leaving them!) and telling me "baby nap!" In other words "Quiet, my baby is sleeping." The best masculine spin I could put on it was, "You are such a good daddy!" Anyway, he needed some tools. When he got all decked out he boasted, "Bob Builder!"In other words, "Look at me, I am Bob the Builder!" Who needs the word "the" anyway, his dad certainly doesn't.
This was the first time that we had an early morning family party. I had a lot planned for the day and woke up at like 6 and couldn't get back to sleep, neither could Ariel so we went downstairs to make the cupcakes. By the time they were ready everyone was up. Dallin and I were the only ones out of our pajamas.
I am taking advantage of little kids not knowing how bad they got it, like using Christmas wrapping paper for his birthday instead of running out in the middle of the night to get birthday paper after having realized that my seemingly endless supply of pre-used gift bags contained none that weren't pink or floral. At least the Christmas paper was just striped, masculine enough, right?
It took Dallin a while to blow out his candles, which was fine because it gave us the chance to get a lot of blowing out the candles-shots. I was encouraging him in this one. I decided to post it because not only is he cute trying to blow out the candles, I liked how my profile reminded me of so many of my siblings, first my nose and forehead of Jacob, then the eye sockets of Rebekah and mouth of Maegan, even the newly grown tight curls next to my temples reminded me of Adam.
This was actually supposed to be the first picture. He had picked out the Diego candle way back when we were shopping for cake decorations for Ariel's birthday. Don't you just love that he is actually looking at the camera?

He is getting to be such a big boy now but when I say things like, "You are a handsome dude," he insists that he is a baby. Yesterday he was showing me how he can put lids on water bottles and I told him that he is a big boy, he said, "No, baby." Then I explained that babies can't put lids on water bottles, he said, "Oh," like it was all coming together for him then, "big boy?" Like could I really be a big boy now? He loves keys and locking and unlocking doors one of his first words was lock. He would say it about any door or key hole. He is so cuddly, he could cuddle and hug and kiss me all day if I let him. I really have to tell him that it is enough kisses, he especially takes advantage of sitting on my lap at church, where I am at his mercy to keep him quiet. He loves his sisters too, maybe a little too much. He is a big helper, like bringing people things that they are talking about even if they didn't ask him for them specifically. He loves his dad and always runs to greet him when he comes home from work. He is also a jokester like taking people's shoes and waiting for them to notice with a smirk on his face when we are getting ready to leave. Ariel picked up some slang at school, she says, "Hey peeps!" Which I think means, "Hello people" and Dallin consequently picked it up from her and likes to tease me by saying, "Mama peep!" Which means "Mama is a peep." To which I respond, "Dallin is a peep!" and it goes and and forth and he giggles the whole time.

catching up with pictures

I'm posting pictures of Ariel's birthday, our trip to the Philadelphia Zoo and more Easter pictures, it was Dallin's birthday yesterday, so I'll try to post those pictures soon too. While I'm waiting for the pictures to upload, I'll tell you a funny story. We were driving in the car and Ariel asks "Is there no end to numbers?" And I said, "Yes there is no end to numbers," and the song "If I could Hie to Kolob" started going through my head, when she had an epiphany, "So there are a lot of numbers that we don't even know."
"Yes there are a lot of numbers we don't even know." Whoah, deep thought.

Notice the magnolia trees behind us, they were all over the zoo, and smelled so nice, it made me nostalgic for our little house in Holladay. I guess I was more excited about taking a picture than the kids were.
Nikolay and Ariel went on a paddle boat ride, the boats were shaped like swans, but I like this close up better because you can see Nikolay concentrating.
Annika in the center of a flower.
All the kids in a honey comb.


Nikolay with the kids at the zoo. He really didn't want me taking any pictures because he hadn't shaved, but I feel like I don't take enough of him with the kids and he hardly ever shaves anyway.
Dallin and Annika at the ward rained-in Easter-egg hunt.

Ariel and her birthday cake that she decorated herself. We had bought all the stuff to decorate it and she just kind of took over and had a lot of fun doing it, which made my life a lot easier.
Dallin digging in the sand volleyball court at a ward barbecue. I just love how cute toddlers are when the squat down and dig like that. Look at his pudgy hands, they won't say like that forever.

Easter Pictures

Dallin and Ariel
Annika
Adriana and Ariel
Dallin
Bunny-angel Adriana


You might recognize the girls' dresses from Peter and Raeah's wedding, I just bought green sashes for Easter and got Dallin a matching sweater vest.

It has been so long

....since I last posted. For the passed month we have been obsessed with the hunt. That is the house hunt. I mean obsessed. We haven't been able to think about or talk about anything else. Now we have come to the conclusion that we just need to wait and see. We know exactly what we want now, but it has been a long process getting to this point.
I have been doing a few new things with my time like running in the morning with a new friend. Reading more, when I can get my mind off houses and concentrate. Shopping, there were so many things on my "that can wait till after we sell the house" list, that it is taking serious time just getting all the shopping done. And scrapbooking. Right after this post I am going to try to link to the twopeas website for the pages I posted on there.
Bye for now and thanks for checking in on me.

Pictures from the zoo

These first two shots are just to let you see the haircuts from a different angle.


These next ones are just fun shots of the kids playing together.



The river otters were so fun to watch.

These next ones are my favorites for how they turned out.






Here they are howling like wolves.