Calm before the storm

The other day I looked over to discover that Gracie was "building" Joseph a house. A house of umbrellas and other various items.

He was enjoying himself.

Then William realized what was going on and joined in on the fun and I threw our painting sheet over them. They were in heaven. 

Next thing I know Gracie pops out with William's Easter bow tie on her head. I had to force her to let me take a picture of her.

So that is how the last couple of days have gone, pretty chill and lots of play. We have been having a good time. That is the calm, now here comes the storm. 

Tomorrow (Friday) my brother Mark will start moving all of their belongings out of this room (below).

This will then become our family room. This is very exciting, except that we don't have furniture to put in it and not really any money to buy any...so we will see what happens. We did get it painted already. A dark gray called Cement from Martha Stewart, but we got the Behr paint plus primer and one gallon and one coat took care of the whole room! That is a big deal cause it is a big room. 

Last week we painted my new craft room/guest room Driftwood Gray. It is a lighter gray and again we really love it.

There is still so much to do, but I can not even tell you how excited I am about this space.

I have to move everything out of the office into here. The office is currently "the room that must not be named". It has been so bad for so long. The problem being that there are far to many things without a place in this room (cause it was temporary). But now everything will have a place. EVERYTHING! Sorry I don't mean to shout, I am just really excited about this. I really love my house. Now pictures of the room that must not be named. I am only showing these because I hope to wow you all with some really amazing after pictures. 

And, Saturday (while they are still moving) I will be throwing Gracie's birthday party that I don't really feel ready for. I am sure this weekend is going to be nuts! But it is the good kind of nuts. Lots of happy things.

I love my house! Did I already say that?

I want

Yesterday I was sewing baby bedding for a friend (I think it is sooo cute) and listened to this while I did it. A talk on desire. It was so good for me to listen to. I really needed to hear it. He talked about really thinking about what it is we desire most. I set my sewing aside, lay down and close my eyes, relax and think about the things I desire most. Of course there are no new desires, but it is good to be reminded cause sometimes the ways we go about attaining our desires can get us off track. For example, I desire a happy home and spend a lot of time trying to make sure it is clean, organized, and decorated. Actually that is not true, I would have to spend a lot of time in order to achieve it, but instead I just stress and worry about it. Because I am sure having a clean, organized, and decorated home would make it a happy place ( but I don't really know, cause I have never actually achieved it), but sometimes many times what would work better would be for me to put down the broom and read a book, play a game, tickle, teach, and even put in time out. I somehow get sidetracked with the cleaning. That is just one example, it is just easy to let the view of the destination become blurry when we are focusing too much on the steps we are taking and consequently start veering of the path we were on.

So now I have some planning and changing to do. Some of my favorite quotes from the talk are, "when we have a vision of what we can become, our desire and our power to act increase enormously." This is one reason I love to surround myself with awesome people. They show me a vision of what I can become if I use the tools Elder Oaks talked about: desire, labor, and faith. With those three things I believe I can achieve anything.

Another favorite quote is, "righteous desires can not be superficial, impulsive, or temporary. The must be heartfelt, unwavering, permanent." This helps give me direction and get my act together. 

Now lets all watch Joseph as he puts these principles into action.

Desire. Labor. Faith.

And this picture is just too sweet. I am grateful I got a chance to see this.

The big three-oh

On Sunday Russ turned 30. It was a pretty normal day. We went to church and then to his parents for dinner and dessert. I got him an oil pan and am going to get him some ramps. Not very exciting, but it is what he wanted. Even less exciting because he saw the oil pan on Friday.

I did not even make a cake, his mom did.

We had a good time hanging with family and watch Lilleigh dance in her big pants. 

It started pouring rain as we were leaving and the kids danced in it until they were soaked and we headed home. I was feeling bad. It was not a very exciting birthday. But after the kids were in bed we went outside and spent some time together in the cool rain, and I didn't feel bad anymore.

from my camera

Before we started playing cards we all went swimming and then came in to eat some burritos from Carolina's (yum).

We are going to miss this guy.

Gracie was falling asleep in her chair. It was pretty funny and Russ got it on video.

When I went to lay her down she popped right back up to go and finish her chips and cheese. Then we corralled all the kids as best we could in the new toy room to watch a movie while we played cards. Our kids love nights like these. 

Oh heck!

We had one last card game with Mark and Ashley and Doug and Rachel. It was a good time. Have you ever played Oh Heck?











Rachel always keeps score. Always.


I wish I could have caught a picture of Marks poker face. It is classic.


Can you see the chandelier shadow?











I am going to miss this.

- Posted by deb on the go.

That girl

She takes pictures of herself on my phone

I have this little girl. She is too cute.

I just adore her. Lately she had been so obedient and it is awesome. Whenever I ask her to do something she replies, "yes mama" and  runs and does it. You better believe I am positively reinforcing that behavior. 

But before this behavior we had an incident that broke my heart. She was having a particularly whiny day and was cry and whining about everything and no matter how calmly I tried to talk to her and get her what she wanted. Finally I yelled "GRACIE! You. have. got. to stop. crying. and. whining. at. me." She did calm down and listen to me and sat down and ate her lunch. After a minute or so I could see tears welling up in her eyes again and she said, "my feelings hurt". That broke my heart and I realized that sometimes I forget to show an increase in love after I have corrected or disciplined my children. This is so important! I need to not forget it.

Mark and Ashley moved out a few weeks back and we set up the kids new toy room. The first night I went in to make sure it was cleaned up and I saw this little set up Gracie had created on the stove. She loves little figurines. 

Another day I sat down to sew and found my machine looking like this.

I find little traces of her play everywhere and I love it. She is just too fun. She likes to wrestle and rough house. She likes to be funny and make people laugh. She loves to get dirty and is not scared of much, but has just enough girly in her to dance and sing her way down the diving board, dress up is awesome outfits, and wear nail polish and makeup whenever she can.

 She will come up and give me hugs many times through out the day and I love it.

Awhile back I over heard Gracie and William talking

G: I wish I had a pet

W: we do have a pet a, our fish

G: No, I want two pets. A fish and a lion

She is always making me laugh.

I want so badly for her to have a good self esteem and know of her great worth. I want to have a good relationship so that I can always bestow my pearls of wisdom to her. But I know good relationships don't just appear. I can't mess up now and expect things to be wonderful later. I have teach her to trust me now. 

No more hurt feelings.

The creek

The creek was not such a secret this year. There were tons of people there, but it was still fun.

Ryan lost his sunglasses and they spent a lot of time looking for them with no luck. The next morning before we left Mark went down there while the water was crystal clear and saw them and jumped in to get them. I told him he was like Harry Potter jumping into ice water for the sword of Gryffindor.

Joseph liked putting his little toes in the cold water.

And I was able to catch a couple people jumping, but not everyone.

Cousin M was so scared of bugs, but decided to be brave and come into the water anyway. I wish I got a picture of her waist deep in the creek.

Joseph loved getting brushed by leaves and he made this face every. time. 

The next day we had a short church service and cleaned up with camp and headed home. 

Joseph will get a wand hold it out and jabber. He has seen William with them enough to know what to do with it, and it is too cute. It was a fun trip and I am so glad we were able to go.