Count your blessings

Let me paint a dismal picture. It's Sunday morning and I'm sitting on the the couch, listening to the freezing cold wind and rain hitting the window- hoping it doesn't turn to snow- feeling sick, cold, lonely, sad, and slightly sorry for myself. So I started looking thru some pictures and it was an instant remedy to change my mood (unfortunately, it can't cure the cold!), made me smile and caused me to reflect on the many blessings I have received.

This was just this morning as Parker was getting ready to walk out the door with Randy for church. He is always so excited to go to nursery! This morning I had a hard time waking him up. I kept saying his name over and over and finally I said, "Parker, you need to get up. It's Sunday and you need to go to church". He sat right up, very groggy of course, and I said "do you want to go?" He said "YES"! and went running out of the room (he ran  into the door because he still wasn't quite awake-didn't phase him) and Randy said "where are you going?" He replied, "church!"

We LOVE this boy!! He is our whole life!! He keeps us on our toes and keeps us laughing!! I can't say enough how grateful I am to be his mother and the blessing he is to me and our little family!

I am also very grateful for my wonderful husband! I love, love, LOVE him!! He is an amazing man, husband, and father. He is a hard worker and does anything he can to provide and take care of our family. He loves to play (rough house) with Parker and Parker can't seem to get enough of it! Parker and I love him so much and love spending our time together!! There just aren't enough hours in the day for us :)

So my thought for the day is to count your blessings. Even when we have a hit a low point there is always something (usually numerous things) to be grateful for. Heavenly Father is taking care of us, he is aware of our needs and blesses us daily. He may not answer every pray the way I would like but I know he does answer. When I struggle and have trials I know he is my source of strength and where I find the patience to endure. I have a wonderful life, the cutest kid (sorry everyone, it's the truth!) and the most amazing husband...what more do I need?? I am one lucky blessed girl :-)

Lately with Parker...

Parker is such a good helper when I'm babysitting but any chance he gets to climb into the baby's walker he's there! He thinks he's so funny when he gets in even though he knows he's not supposed too! But on this day he was too cute and I couldn't resist taking a picture before getting him out :)

I left Parker in the bathroom to go get his clothes for after his bath and when I came back this was how I found him! He decided he couldn't wait to get in the tub and jumped right in!

~look at that bed-head!~

Our latest ordeal was dealing with strep! I am pretty sure we have never seen Parker this sick before and it was so, so sad. This was all he did for a few days and if you have ever been around him for any amount of time you know he doesn't know how to hold still so this was really hard to watch him act so lifeless and weak. We are so grateful to have that behind us!!

Tarzan became his new favorite movie as he laid around :)

Poor little man! This was his attempt at a smile!

Graduation pics...

Just wanted to add a few more pics from our weekend.

My niece Gracie. She and Parker were being pretty silly together during lunch!

Randy's grad gift was a Wii!! He was very excited...and I think surprised!

We all got a good laugh from this shirt of Wayne's!!

My cousin Heather (pictured above) made this cake for the boys! It was delish!!

Pomp and Circumstance...

I don't think Randy or I felt like this day would ever come and yet it has and we couldn't be happier or more excited! It has been a long road and Randy has worked harder than anyone and I can't even begin to say how proud I am of him! We had a great weekend full of graduation festivities for Randy, my brother Jeff, and cousin in-law Wayne. We are so grateful for the family that has supported us through the years and for those who were able to make it to spend this time with us! It meant alot to us!

Howard family at Jeff's convocation

Randy walking across the stage....

I am soo proud of him! I can't say it enough!!

Congratulations! You did it :)

Randy's family that came to convocation

Family time!!

For the past few years we've held Easter dinner at our place and have invited family over to enjoy it with us! This year was no different and we were even lucky enough to have a few extras join us! It was a lot of fun and alot of food!

(We managed to squeeze everyone in for a picture thanks to the self-timer!!)

Easter

For Easter we got together with our friends, the Seiters for some traditional easter activities: an egg hunt, dyeing easter eggs and making sugar cookies! Parker and Avery are still a little too young to enjoy coloring eggs but they did catch on to the easter egg hunt pretty quick! Still, that only lasted so long before they were just chasing each other around and we had to  encourage them to finish finding the eggs!

Once Parker figured out what was in the eggs it was time out for a snack!

 

Just chillin' on a Sunday evening...

Jeff came over for Sunday dinner and decided to play Family Fued while waiting to eat. Parker (who also likes to play FF) decided to throw himself down on the floor and play too! He's so funny when he "plays", when the big X comes up on the screen he shakes his head and says "noooo"! Too funny.

The other game Parker likes is the X-box. He's really in to football...and well, really any sport!

Funny story: Parker got the controllers out one day and I said, "Parker, that's Daddy's game, let's play something else". So later when Randy came home from work I told Parker to ask Daddy to play a game with him, so he (Parker) immediately ran to get the controllers out! We had a good laugh!!

Here is Parker "playing" football with Uncle Jeff! Just had to get a picture of his feet!!

*Notice his finger placement...does this come naturally for boys??

You can see he's really getting into it now! He must have done some tricky move ;-) Look how focused he is!

Taking it easy...maybe he needs some stiffer competition!!

Valentines day

I came home from Boise the weekend of valentines day and my sweet, thoughtful husband had this big sugar cookie and a bouquet of flowers waiting for me! And a very clean house!!

You can see we cut into it before we remembered to pull the camera out! haha!

Sunday afternoon after church Parker got to open his valentines gift from Aunt Celeste! He loves his new book!!

Playing with cousins!

The first weekend of February we went to visit my family on the other side of the state. Randy stayed for the weekend but Parker and I stayed for a week to spend time with my sister and her kids while they were up visiting from Texas. We had a great week! We had valentines day pix done of the kids, we went shopping (!), I was introduced to Hobby Lobby and guacamole- LOVE them both! Had a good time just visiting and letting the kids play together. 

These pix are from a morning when us "moms" were trying to get ready and we needed a someone to watch the kids! Parker and Ava are quick to get into stuff/trouble so the bathtub was my solution! I was able to watch them, keep them contained, and they thought it was great! 

Look at those cute, mischevious faces!

Obviously the bathtub was a hit, even Bayden wanted to get in and join the fun!

Ok Mom, fun is over!!

They need our help!!

Our friends, Jason and Autumn are trying to adopt! Please help them spread the word by adding their picture/link (shown to the right, in the sidebar) to your blog and encouraging others to do the same, you never know who might see it!

Instructions (for those of you who don't already know how):


1) Right click on the picture and Save the image to your computer.

2) Go to your blog Layout menu

3) Click Add a Gadget

4) Click Picture

5) Paste this: http://jason-and-autumn.blogspot.com/ into the link box

6) Click browse and find the image you saved.

***That's it!

CHAMPIONS!!!!!!!!!!!

Christmas!

I have more pictures to post from Christmas that I will add later but I just wanted to get this cute video up of Parker and Randy playing with the mega blocks Parker got from Santa. Parker LOVES these blocks! We've had a few good days now of Parker just playing with his new toys INSTEAD of getting into everything he's not supposed too. Great job, Santa!!

Need a gift idea?

Or if you are pregnant or know someone who is, or just had a baby and are nursing, this is for you!! I have recieved two different promo codes for FREE nursing covers, you just pay $8.95 s&h. Visit https://www.uddercovers.com/ (horribly, un-attractive name I know...because we want to feel like cows when we're nursing;) and they have six patterns to choose from, add one (1) to your cart and use either promo "planning" or "christmas" to recieve yours free! These are regularly $32.00 so it makes a great gift (for you or someone else) for only 9 bucks....So check it out!!

Oh, and so there are no rumors floating around out there, I am not pregant! I don't want this post to be misleading in any way, I just happened to come across a good deal and am passing it on! I wasn't "shopping" around for one for myself!!

18 months already? Are you sure?

This handsome little man has started nursery! Not sure how I feel about it, I admit I was a little sad dropping him off but it was nice to sit through sunday school without a squirmy kid! He on the other hand, could have cared less to be left. He found his friend Olivia and a bucket of cars and was set! I don't think he even knew what was going on!

My little boy is growing up too fast :(

Food+football+games=

Thanksgiving!! We stayed home this year for thanksgiving and had such a great day! My cousin Kristina and her husband Logan, and my brother Jeff, had also decided not to go anywhere for the break so we collaberated together and prepared a delicious dinner. It was wonderful! Just enough food to not feel overwhelmed by too many options, ate until we were FULL, picked in it throughout the day and still had leftovers when the day was over. It was perfect. At first I wasn't too sure about a thanksgiving dinner without a table, eating around the coffe table just didn't seem right to me, but then I realized we have done it for everything else, why should it be any different this time? It's how we live. And we like it :)

So here we are with our great meal around our little table! (what we need is some comfy little throw pillows to sit on;)

Jeff, Logan, and Parker getting ready for games.
Randy relaxing and enjoying the football games...and uh, peace to all of you...I guess :/ (not really sure, maybe you should ask him)

Parker also enjoying football, showing off his "touchdown"

And here we are with our game that lasted around two hours! Randy got creative and took an aerial shot of us.

It was such a fun day! A great day to kick off the holiday season. But lucky for us, it lasted longer than the one day! We had a weekend full of fun ( I just don't have any pictures to show). My sister Celeste came friday to spend the weekend with us and we met up in Idaho Falls with her and my other brother Bryant, his wife and daughter, for some shopping and a yummy lunch at Red Robin (which btw, has a gingerbread milkshake that is delish!). It was soo much fun to have four out of six of us siblings together, gatherings like this are few and far in between, and weekends just aren't long enough it seems! Come again everybody!