Sunday, April 27, 2014

Birthday Play Date

Part of me wanted to do a party for Will this year and part of me just didn't want to go through the effort. But I was feeling ambitious and had pinned ideas for making my own train cake, making toy trains out of boxes for all of the kids and all sorts of other fun train themed party ideas.

Then a good friend of mine mentioned that they never did parties for their kids until they were 5. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Will really doesn't care about all those little "extra" things. So much of it would be for pictures sake...and that much work simply wasn't enough motivation for a picture.

But I wanted him to have some friends over and at least do a little celebration.

Birthday Play Date.

The night before, we went to all of Will's friends houses and invited them over to play the following day. It was meant to be super informal, just come and play outside for a while and eat cake. Parents were told they could drop their kids off, or if they wanted to stay and chat that was welcome as well. They could come when they wanted and leave when they wanted.

It was perfect.
Will had about 5 friends show up to play.
They enjoyed jumping on the trampoline.
Playing with some of Will's trains.


Decorating cupcakes.


Riding bikes.
I think Will was in heaven. He had talked about it ALL week and how he was so excited for his friends to come play. But I think he was even more excited about his chocolate cake. Every time I asked what he wanted, he said chocolate cake.
While I was gathering kids over to decorate the cupcakes, Blake got her hands on one and was chowing down. Then she discovered frosting. She had a plastic butter knife that she would dip in the frosting and lick it off.

After a while, I had to close the lid so she wouldn't eat it all. She threw a fit and clawed at it trying to get it back open.

It was to let the kids run wild while all of the adults just sat back and chatted.
 
 The following day was his actual birthday and he got to open his main present from us.

  More tracks for his train set.
Happy Birthday Will!




Saturday, April 26, 2014

Because of Him

Everything good that I have in my life is because of Him. Because of Him, I get to be with my family forever. Because of Him, I can be forgiven for all of the stupid choices I make. Because He lives, death is not the end. Because He lives, I can live.

I've always enjoyed Easter, though perhaps not quite for the right reason. Many of my Easters growing up we were spent 4-wheeling at the Sand Dunes. And while that is always fun, it was nice to stay home and think about why we really celebrate Easter.

On Saturday morning, we enjoyed going to an Easter egg hunt at our Bishops house. There was a good turn out and they had to limit the number of eggs each kid could get so it was a little more fair. Will didn't quite get the concept about hurrying to get as many as you can. Once he had one egg, he wanted to see what was inside and eat that candy before grabbing the next one. Guess it's lucky they had the limit so there were still some left for us.

Cindy and her family came up that afternoon to hang out. It was a beautiful day so we spend the majority of it outside just watching the kids play. We went to the park and the kids had fun trying to find treasures and also getting buried.
Since our church is at 9a, we were up bright and early Sunday trying to get ready and be on time. I was singing with the choir so I had to be ready extra early for practice before church. The choir sat on stage the entire meeting so Lance was busy trying to keep both kids somewhat reverent.
From the stage I witnessed -

- Blake was frequently saying mommy...mommy and looking around for me.
- Lance discovering that he didn't fill up her bottle, dropping Blake off to a neighbor in the pew next to him, and heading out the door. Blake didn't like that and started screaming like she was being tortured and had to be walked around the back and Will took off after Lance. Someone a few rows back grabbed Will and kept him occupied. Meanwhile when Lance gets back, he gets a look of panic on his face when he can't find either of his kids and starts looking around a bit frantically.
And I'm sitting on stage enjoying every second of it.

The entire sacrament meeting program was music. The congregation sang some hymns, the choir did several numbers, the primary did a number, and the ym/yw did a number. I loved hearing all the songs about Christ and being part of it.

Lance received several good jobs and slaps on the back for handling two crazy kids alone.
In primary, Raegan (the primary president) focused her sharing time on the life of Christ and things that he did throughout his life and after. I thought it was a very appropriate lesson and helped me appreciate all that Christ has done for us. We were also told that every time we open an Easter egg,  to remember the empty tomb and what that signifies. Think of how much our lives our affected because of that empty tomb.

After church, Bishop asked everyone to meet outside for their annual ward picture. Of course we also had to get a family shot.

 When we got home, I snapped a few pictures of the kids in the Easter outfits I made them and we spent the remainder of the day sleeping and relaxing.

Pictures from Will's photo shoot at target.


I am so grateful for all that Christ has done for me. He lived life perfectly. The thought of that floors me. I don't think I've lived a single day perfectly (probably not a single hour), yet alone my entire life. He is such a great example to all of us and how we should constantly be striving to be more. I can be so much better and he has shown me how. Our lives aren't easy, and it is hard to be good. But Christ's life wasn't easy either. He endured so much pain, ridicule, betrayal, EVERYTHING, yet he remained perfect through it all.

It's difficult to think of all of the pain and suffering that Christ put himself through. He is the Son of God. He worked miracles, walked on water, raised the dead. Surely he could have stopped what has happening. But he didn't. He willingly suffered for us. For me.

Because of Him, I will be better.

Thursday, April 24, 2014

3 Year Old Photoshoot

This handsome guy turns 3 this week. It was about time we got some updated pictures for him. 





Can't believe how lucky I am that he is mine. 

Sunday, April 20, 2014

The House Tour: Upper Floor

We have lived in our house about 8 months now. Part of me can't believe we have already almost been here a year, yet part of me feels like it was so long ago that we lived in Logan.

We haven't done anything to the house since we moved in, unless you count Will coloring on several of the walls and the few dings holes we've added throughout the house. One of the things we really liked about this house was that it has a ton of room for growth and it has a ton of potential, but it is already nice how it is. If we never changed or updated anything, it isn't terrible and unlivable. There are so many things I would love to do, and hopefully someday we will get to them. But for now, we are enjoying our house as is.


Here is what our house looks like from the outside. Typical split-level entry where you open the door and have steps going up on one side, down on the other. There are hundreds on others houses that look almost the exact same and have very similar layouts. Oh well.

We live in a cul-de-sac so we don't get a ton of traffic. It's one of my favorite things about the location. I also love all of our huge trees. One of the only major downfall is the lack of a garage. 

When you walk up the stairs, the first thing you will see is our living room.


Right off of the living room is our kitchen and dining room.



The door goes outside to our deck.
First door in the hallway is a restroom.
 
There are two bedrooms at the end of the hallway. One is Will's bedroom.

This picture was taken several months ago. He now sleeps on his car bed.



The closets are nice and big with a good combination of shelves and hanging room.

 The other room is being used as our office/guest room/craft room. This is probably our most chaotic room. There are still boxes unpacked everywhere. One day maybe I'll get to decorating, but for the unforeseeable future, this is probably how it will be until we figure out what we want to do. 
We might turn this into Blake's bedroom, perhaps a toy room...not sure yet.
And that pretty much concludes the tour of our upstairs. Once I get my basement clean enough to snap some pictures, I will post the rest of the tour. 

Friday, April 18, 2014

Baby Contest 2014

Back in February I stumbled across a "Cutest Baby Contest" that was being held by a photographer in the Ogden area and I decided to enter Blake. She took pictures of all of the babies, posted them on Facebook, then whoever got the most likes won. Basically it was more of a popularity contest and who could get the most of their friends to vote than actually choosing the cutest baby. I knew we didn't have much hope for winning, but it was still fun to get some pictures done for free by someone we could never otherwise afford.

So many of them turned out cute, but I was only able to order a few of them. There are a lot of cute babies out there, but this girl is definitely one of the cutest.


 




Even though she didn't win, thank you to everyone who took the time to go and vote for her.