A Very Hungry Birthday Party

Happy birthday to my sweet baby Erin. Today is Erin's second birthday. I can't believe how fast the time has gone by. It seems just like yesterday that I was awake in the middle of the night watching movies, pretending that my contractions weren't strong enough to go to the hospital. I have some very memorable moments from that day. Like when we finally got to the hospital and were in the elevator going up to Labor and Delivery. The door opened just as I was having a huge contraction. I couldn't move, I just had to stand there hunched over until it passed. The poor man sitting on the bench right in front of the elevator had no where else to go, he had to endure it with me. Another moment I remember is screaming, "It's not working!!!" My labor was progressing too quickly for the epidural to work so I screamed the WHOLE 50 minutes I was there before Erin was born. My eyes were clenched shut the whole time because of the pain and the screaming, I don't even hardly recall who was in my room except the people I knew where there: Ben, mom, doc. You can read the full story here. Now, two years later, this little girl is the sweetest thing ever. She totally melts my heart and I love her to pieces.

We celebrated Erin's birthday with a combined family party. Here's some pics to illustrate the event.

Pumpkinland

Last Monday for preschool we got to go to Pumpkinland on a field trip. It was kind of an off day for the girls, Shelby hadn't had a good night's rest the night before and Erin's attention span just wasn't that long. In the end, though, I think they had fun. We had got to go through the corn maze, checked out the pumpkin patch, saw the animals and the great big garden. Here are some fun pics of the girls.

Wasatch Woman 6K

Today I had the great opportunity of running this race with my youngest sister, Laura. Last year I ran this race for the first time with my sister, Juli. She found out about the race and we used it as motivation to get in shape after having our babies.

Running this race has been such an energizer and motivator for me. I haven't done a whole lot of running this summer to get ready for the 6K, but I have been consistently walking and exercising and trying to treat my body good. Running today makes me want to keep running and doing better. I'm even starting to make loftier goals (which I'll reveal later) that I'm pretty exctied about. Another thing I am excited about is that I weigh about 8 pounds less than I did last year at race time. That's really exciting for me and is something that has taken YEARS to accomplish!

My personal goal was to run the whole thing again this year, which I'm happy to say we did. I could definitely tell that my strength and endurance were a lot better as well. We got to run through the gardens at Thanksgiving Point, which are beautiful. The day was great too. It was overcast and cool when we started but we warmed up quickly and the temperature kept us from overheating. I'm glad we had our fan club there to cheer us on. Ben brought the girls and my parents came too and took pictures.

Anyway, if you want to see my post about our run last year, check it out here. Here are some pics from today.

Hooray For Preschool

This fall Shelby got to start preschool! We were so lucky when we moved here to make some great friends who were starting a co-op preschool. I definitely wanted in and knew this would be a wonderful experience for me as well as Shelby. There are 6 moms and we all take turns teaching 2 days a week throughout the school year. These little friends have become Shelby's best friends. I am so grateful that she has such wonderful friends to learn and play with. I'm thankful I have the opportunity to be friends with all of their moms too, and that I can learn and play with them as well.

Last week one of the other moms was teaching a fall/apple theme and I was able to arrange to go back to the farm, where we just moved from, for a field trip. We visited the apple orchard, picked apples and took lots of pictures and had lots of fun. We couldn't leave without seeing the sheep, so we stopped by on our way out to say "hi." It was a great day. We love our preschool friends!

Our Love Wall

I thought long and hard about what to put on the walls in my house, and especially my bedroom. This is the first place we've owned and it's the first opportunity we've really had to make our place our own. I wanted what was on our walls to reflect things that were important to our family and could provide inspiration and teaching moments for our children.

I deliberated a lot about my bedroom walls because I wanted it to be a sort of sanctuary for Ben and I away from everything and I wanted it to mean something to us. In talking with Ben about how to decorate, he really wanted artwork. So we decided on a large painting and brought it home but I just couldn't bring myself to put it up. So, I thought some more, stopped by my new favorite decorating store for some inspiration and this is what I came up with when I got home.


The quote on top says "Choose your love, love your choice," which I thought was perfect for us. My friend helped me put it together and did the vinyl and in looking it up we discovered it was a quote from President Monson. That is an inspired man and his words will daily inspire me.

The picture frames I decided to fill with pictures from our wedding album. We got some great pictures and I figured they didn't do anyone good collecting dust on the top of a shelf. So here they are on display, reminding us what a wonderful day it was.

Ben calls it our LOVE wall. It's pretty much the only thing in the house that I've done that he doesn't dislike. I think we'll keep it.

DIY-ing

I've had my spurts of craftiness, but for the most part, I have to follow a pattern or example to really be crafty. I don't know what's gotten in to me lately, but I've been feeling the need to be a little crafty. I've learned to do a few things lately that I thought were so cute and didn't realize how EASY they were. I guess you never know until you try right?

So, months ago, I saw these cute silhouette pictures on another blog I read and couldn't wait to get them done to hang them on my wall. I didn't really read the instructions the first time I saw the post, so I didn't know what I was getting into, but when I went back and found it, I was pleasantly surprised that there were only 3 easy steps.

Step 1

Print a picture of your child's (or whoever) profile on card stock. It doesn't matter the picture quality. You can even print it off in black and white.


Step 2

Cut out the profile and paint them black. I used craft acrylic paint; two coats. You could probably spray paint as well. (Once the paint dries, the paper will start to curl up. Just put it between some white paper and lay a heavy book on top of it for a while to flatten it out.)



Step 3
Mount and frame your silhouette. I glued the silhouette onto another piece of white card stock. You could also adhere it to canvas or another textured surface. Place in the frame of your choice and hang on the wall.

Holiness in Motherhood

The last few months I have made a great effort to improve my mothering and to find the joy in this journey I am on with my little family. Before our trip to Oregon, I bought a couple of books at D.I. by Linda Eyre. One of them was "A Joyful Mother of Children", which I read on our trip. If you're not familiar with the Eyre's, they have been writing books for decades on parenting, and they also founded the Joyschool Program. They are amazing and so motivating. Some of the great things I learned while reading "A Joyful Mother of Children," are the importance of and how to balance and organize family life, finding joy along the way, motherhood is the greatest career, and the significance of spirituality and fine-tuning ourselves. I wish I would have taken more notes as I read because, looking back, I can't remember all that I thought I did. However, I do remember some things that really stuck out to me and have been trying to implement some of those things.

Last year for Mother's Day, Linda and her daughter, Shawni Pothier, came out with a book called A "Mother's Book of Secrets." Ben got it for me and I totally devoured it. I was totally hooked on their enthusiasm and love for mothering/parenting.

The thing that stuck with me the most from that book was that although we may feel like sometimes we're in the "trenches" with no light at the end of the tunnel, ther IS light at the end of the tunnel and there are things that will help us get through. At the end of the book Shawni printed her blog address, 71toes.blogspot.com . It's just her family blog, but the woman is amazing. I have read some of the most inspirational things on her blog, from decorating and what's on her walls , to what she with her son on his 12th birthday.

Her latest post is about Holiness in Motherhood and I really wanted to share it. She reminds us that although daily scripture reading and prayers may slip through our hands more often than we'd like to admit, mothering in and of itself IS holy and we can find holiness in the little moments if we will just switch our focus.

I've seen this video popping up a lot recently on blogs and on Facebook. It has given me great comfort and strength to know that we're not in this alone!

Cool Find

*I went back and checked the links today and saw that they weren't the right ones. They are now fixed.

I'm not a DIY-er but I found this cool site when I was looking for free printable recipe cards. Here's a couple of links.

This is one to some ADORABLE printable cards. Love them.
Julianna Smith Recipe Cards

And here is one for a recipe card generator also on the site. You just fill in your recipe and print and it turns out way cute.
Recipe Generator

Here's the link to the blog. It has tons of fun and adorable DIY crafts and lots of free printable for different stuff.
How About Orange...

Oh, and here's one more link to some more recipe cards.
Tie That Binds Blog

Last one, I promise. Here's a link to a fun weekly menu planner.
Menu Planner

Have FUN!

Driving with kids in cars: My favorite activities

So, for our Oregon trip I asked several friends for suggestions about how to keep the girls occupied on the long car ride. I also looked for ideas online that would help. I came away with a lot of things. I had a whole bag of things prepared for us to do and I didn't even get through all of it by the time we got home.

I wanted to share some of my favorite activities that I'm sure we'll use again.

Car BINGO-This we played all the way there. I think we printed it off the Family Fun website. I had to explain what some of the things were to Shelby but overall, she had fun looking for things.


Homemade bendaroos (pipecleaners)- This was one of Shelby's most favorite activities and she asked to play with them many times. I just took some pipecleaners and cut them in half and it made a ton to play with. I helped her make a few things and she used her imagination with the rest.


Funny Faces-I have always wanted to make this in felt for Shelby but have never gotten around to doing it. She had fun with this for just a little while; not her favorite.


Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom Tree- We love this story in our house and we like to sing it as a song. I printed this template out of the tree and got the magnetic letters at the dollar store, along with the metal tray. We sang the song in the car and I thought I had brought the right book to read it but when I grabbed it, I realized it was the Chicka, Chicka, 1,2,3 book instead.


Farm animal sounds magnets-Erin has such a short attention span at this age, it was hard to find something to keep her attention. Luckily we had this little game from when Shelby was younger that she played with for a short while.


Stickers-what kid doesn't like to play with stickers?


Car mat-The night before we left I had this crazy idea to look for one of those car mats, like the carpet kind that you can play with toy cars on, only portable and printable. I didn't even know what to call it to google it but I found one easily, I couldn't believe my luck. I printed one out for each of the girls and they both enjoyed playing with it. I had a big bag of "things that go" manipulatives from when I taught school (trains, cars, planes, buses, etc.) that I had to go with it.

(Here's the link for the car mat, or whatever you want to call it. I just used the first page and enlarged it a little bit to fill up the whole page.)

Other things we did:
*watched a little tv (they surprisingly didn't have much attention for it)
*colored
*sang songs
*played "I Spy"
*slept
*read stories

*I also got a great idea from my friend Rachel to have a small snack and a different toy/activity each hour. I found these perfect containers at the dollar store that came ten to a pack and measured about 1/4 cup. I used a variety of treats ranging from candy to nuts. It was the perfect snack size for the girls and I prepared them ahead of time and stored them in a bucket.

S'mores Cookies

It seems like every time I go to the kitchen to make something lately, Shelby is always asking me to either help or get on the counter and watch. The other day while Erin was still napping I thought it would be a great opportunity for Shelby and I to have some quality time in the kitchen. I found this fun recipe for S'mores cookies and decided to make them together.

Here are the cast of characters (minus the nasty bag of trash in the background waiting to be taken out):
*Cute Shelby
*Cookie dough
*Hershey's chocolate bar
*Graham crackers
*Marshmallows
*Large scoop
*Cookie sheet


We did actually make the cookie dough together then Shelby got to put the fixings on top before we baked them.






After the first batch had done cooking, Shelby had reached the end of her attention span. It actually worked out because Erin had just woken up and I decided to let her decorate the next batch.

Mmmm, first the chocolate...


then a little marshmallow here...


Oops, no room for the marshmallow, I think I'll have to eat it instead.


Hmm, on second thought, I think I'll put that back and try the chocolate.


Ahh, finally finshed....just can't resist one more taste!


Feelin' a little woozy from all the sugar.


The finished product.