Couldn't help it, here's number 2!

I stayed up too late, but here's another layout! These won't be new pictures to anyone who reads the blog, because the blog is basically my journaling!

Foray into a strange new world

I am now officially a digital scrapbooker. Of course I'm still a traditional scrapbooker, I've just put together my first layout digitally! Hooray! Thank you to everyone who has given me hints and tips and computer programs(thanks Mom!). This lo actually took me a few hours to put together because I'm still learning Photoshop and different techniques, not to mention having way too much fun downloading all the free goodies there are the net. But here it is. I do have a few questions for other dscrappers: how do you do double page layouts? and how can you make photo corners? If anyone else has any tips I would love some free advice! and happy halloween!

Frugalfamily

If you're like me you're always looking for ways to save and this new site my sister Maren put together is something you should check out. Go to http://frugalfunnyfamily.blogspot.com/ for tips on having a frugal, and humor filled, family.

Super Dad

This week Brent has been my Superman. Anyone who knows him knows that he is always a terrific husband and father, but this past weekend he's outdone himself. I haven't been feeling that hot, I'm pretty sure I had one of the many flu bugs going around, and haven't felt like making any food or going anywhere. So Brent has made dinner not 2, but 3 times and has brought me jamba juices twice. He's played with the girls, studied for his masters class, skipped a meeting to put the girls to bed, done multiple loads of dishes, made chocolate chip cookies, taken a day off of work when Eden got her tubes, and got the girls ready for church this morning while I was at meetings. Plus he's so darn cute! He is my hero.

All you need is another hole in your head...maybe two

First of all, thank you to everyone thinking about us today, it's very comforting to know that we have friends all over. Secondly, everything went great with the surgery. We woke up early, took Laura to a friend's house and then made our way in early morning traffic. I've forgotten what it's like at 8:00am! When we got there we went straight back to the prep room where we of course filled out paperwork. It was nice the nurse, doctor and anesthesiologist all came and briefly talked to us before hand. Eden was so happy, she was singing primary songs on the way and smiled at all of the doctors. Also she was able to wear her own jammies and take her fuzzy blankie with her along with the little bear they gave her. But then we handed her over and they took her away. No words. Brent and I both about started crying! But they kept us busy moving to different rooms: the waiting room, the consultation room, and finally the recovery room. It was only about 15 minutes until the doctor came and told us that they were finished, everything went well, and that she was just waking up. About 5 minutes later they brought her to us in the recovery room and boy was she mad! She was crying so hard, it made me so happy to hear her little voice! But of course, the nurse said she'd been asking for DaDa since she woke up. typical daddy's girl. For about the next 20 minutes she was inconsolable. I guess I would be too if I woke up with strange people in green clothing, my ears hurt and i felt all funky from anestesia. Kind of like a close encounter, hmmm. Anyway, we stayed for about a half hour to make sure she didn't have a reaction then headed back to pickup L. She sang the whole way home, well up until the block before our house. Then the combo of anestesia and driving got the better of her tummy. But after a few naps and a little bit of clinginess we have our little Eden back better than new! Hopefully this will help her sleep better and keep our visits to the doctor to a minimum. Right now she and Eden are dancing around my bedroom to 'All American Regects'. Yep, she's fine:)

I have a favor to ask. Would anyone who wouldn't mind, please keep our family in your prayers tonight and tomorrow, Eden is getting tubes put into her ears tomorrow morning. There's really not that much to worry about, she does have to go under general anesthesia, but the surgery's only 15 minutes long, and all the research I've done says it's very safe, but would you still pray for us? I'd sure appreciate it. Thank you!

The jazz and the beginning of a life of public speaking

This last weekend I had a new experience, I went to my first professional ball game. Brent was 'awarded' some jazz tickets from work because he's just amazing, and he gave them to me for christmas along with the season symphony tickets. So Saturday we made our way to Salt Lake. Also we're very lucky to have Lanna and Scott living in SLC so the girls went and played with their cousins for a few hours instead of being stuck home with a babysitter. They loved watching a Dora movie, playing dressups(Dylon was the prince) and eating pizza. In fact when we came back at 10:00 Laura didn't want to leave. Poor Kayla had been trying for an hour to get Laura to go to sleep with stories. It never works for me either:) Anyway, the jazz were up the whole game by 20 points which I should hope they would be since the Clippers are ranked the lowest team in the NBA! It wasn't exactly an on the edge of your seat game, but it was fun none the less. Brent and I have a great time making fun of the players and the jazz danceretts or whatever they're called. I love datenight, especially free ones! Go jazz!



In contrasting news Laura gave her first talk in Primary. She did a great job. Here is an unofficial transcript of her first public speaking appearance:



"'Men are that they might have joy.' Heavenly Father wants me to be happy. He gave me my body so I could be happy. One thing that makes me happy is to dance. When the music is fast I like to jump up an down. When the music is slow I like to dance like a beautiful butterfly. I am grateful for my body. "

Choo Choo!

When I mop the

kitchen floor the girls love to make a train out of the chairs in the front room. They go all sorts of places, especially to have picnics at Grandma's house.

A Sunbeam's Perspective

Yesterday was Laura's first day as a Sunbeam. Sniff, sniff. I'm proud of her but I'm a mother so I get sentimental when my first child moves into primary. I'm serving in the primary right now so I get to see the transition first hand. How well she sits in her seat, except she doesn't like to sit by Kenny, and she wanted the little blue seat and not the brown ones. How she flipped through Brent's set of mission scriptures that we let her take, mainly because I remembered last minute that everyone who brings their scriptures gets a starburst:) But my favorite new sunbeam moment came after dinner. Brent asked her to sing one of the songs she had learned. They'd gone over 'Nephi's courage', so she launched into a full scale rendition, "Nephi was commanded to go and get the plates! From the wicked Lady inside the city gates!" Love it.


p.s. if you have no idea what the heck primary is, go to www.lds.org for more info:)

Hehe, a new background:)

I don't know why, but this background just makes me really happy. I liked the stripes, but this is classy! Thanks again to Natasha whose pointed me toward a lot of great free digital scrapbooking websites. I'm going to put a few of them on my links section.

In other news, we are doing really well, had a great weekend just hanging out with family. Sarah and Nate came up on Saturday afternoon after a semi-successful primary activity. Sarah and I took the girls to Target, woohoo, and Kid-to-Kid, and then came back and put them all to bed. Laura of course didn't sleep, bah, but the rest of the girls were pooped. Then a not so small miracle happened, we all went on a date. Without the kids! I called our two favorite babysitters who happen to be really good friends, and they stayed with all 4 girls while the adults went to Famous Dave's and had the XXL rack of ribs:) I love ribs. I'm not so into steaks or 3 pound hamburgers, but I love ribs. Yum, it was delicious. And it was really nice to have a couple of hours full conversation with two other couples (Nate's brother and his very nice date came too). I'm not saying that I never get adult interaction, I actually feel very blessed in that regard, but a real double date? Very cool. Thanks Sarah for coming and letting us go! Hope everyone had a good weekend too.

p.s. does anyone have Kristy's (Bates) phone number? Is she in Utah now?

WooHoo! Stripes!

Thank you Thank you Thank you Katie for letting me know about that wonderful person's blog about personalizing blogs. What a lifesaver! I highly recommend it to anyone else wanting to tweak their personal space. http://sjhblogdesign.blogspot.com/ Also thank you Ellen for trying to talk me through it, keep checking back, this is just the beginning:)

Rather Frustrated

So I've been trying to do all sorts of neat things to my blog. Unfortunately none of them have worked. My main problem is that my Mom got me photoshop to go with my new computer for christmas, but the program is still in ID, and here I am in UT with no photo software:( So in order to try my hand at digital scrapbooking I've been downloading and trying out various free software that is offered on the web, and I have come to the conclusion that they all stink. Nothing is working. Bah. I'm just annoyed and wanted to vent. I should really just be patient because I will be getting this great software in about a week, but I really want to customize my blog and make it cool. Instead I've got boring blue and blah fonts. Oh well. If anyone has any advice let me know.

In a different vein my house is fairly clean, the girls are napping quietly, the laundry's going, dinner's in the crockpot, I even exercised this morning, and I have nothing I'm supposed to be doing, except that as soon as I wrote that I just thought of at least 5 things I should be doing. Rats, so now I'm just going to pretend I'm having a carefree moment:) But the snow is falling softly outside and it just feels like a nice wintry day. So despite boring backgrounds I'm happy. I hope you are too.

Here are some great pictures from Saturday. We have tons of snow this year and Brent and the girls took advantage of how wet it was. Brent immediately started to roll the two biggest snowballs he could to put on top of each other, the only problem was that they got so big he couldn't lift them. Hence there are two snowmen:) Which was fine because Laura wanted to have a Mommy and a little girl one anyway. Laura mostly made snow angels, and Eden kept taking off her gloves to pick up leaves being uncovered. The snowpeople have itty bitty baby carrot noses and bark smiles, but that doesn't seem to bother them any, a lesson for us all. I had a great time sitting on our porch with a blanket and happily snapping pictures. What a great snowy Saturday afternoon.

A new phase for Laura belle

It seems like the last few weeks Laura has moved into a new stage. She's much more independent, in a very good way! She'll play for a lot longer by herself or with Eden, although she still doesn't like to be too far away from me, and she is very good at sharing with her little sister. As an example we stayed New Year's Eve at Lanna and Scott's house. We took her princess night light to help her sleep, but unfortunately it did not make its way back to home with us. Not so good. But we went and got a new one the next day as a sub until we could get her favored one back, but she surprised me when she quickly offered her old one for Eden so she wouldn't be scared either!

Laura's drawings are also becoming much more recognizable:) The 'person' she's drawing is me. Our conversation went something like this, "Mom, this is you! See your big mouth!" "Oh really do I have a big mouth?" "Yea, sometimes you do." Priceless. If you look closely you can also see my triangle nose, eyebrow and chin details. I know it's not amazing, but for me it's truly amazing.

Finally, Laura and I started something yesterday, inspired by the Stafford's Sea World jar, to help her learn about money and work. Laura decided she wanted a new dress for her doll. It being just a few weeks since Christmas I wasn't about to just go out and buy her something else. So she's earning it. We have two jars, one with some coins in it (honestly about 50) and another one for her to put them into. When she does something to 'earn' a penny she gets to take one from the clear jar and put into her decorated hot chocolate container(pictured above). Previous to this Laura has resisted all charts, rewards, stickers etc. to help her be a helper and sharer. But with a little preconditioning from Grandma's m&m machine she loves her penny jar. It's been two days and she's made her bed, picked up toys repeatedly, shared with her sister, helped me unload the dishwasher, gotten her jammies on quickly, and generally been a great little girl. We'll see how long it lasts, but for now I'm excited to go buy her her dolly dress. She's definitely earning it!

I'm excited for this new stage, especially since next week she'll be graduating into the Sunbeam class:) Yea for my little girl who is getting so big!

Cowgirl Up!

Those darn ears

The last few months Eden has been in to the doctor a few times because of ear infections. Despite oral antibseems they have persisted, especially in her left ear. So yesterday and today she had to have injectionable antibiodics in both legs. Sometimes known as peanut butter shots:( Needless to say she has been quite miserable. For the first few hours she wouldn't even stand up and has just wanted to be held. She had a very hard time sleeping yesterday so when she finally did drop off I snuck into her room with the camera. What a sweet heart. I just learned from Rosemary that her propensity to have a propensity for ear infections is another thing she inherited from herDaddy. Apparently Brent's first ear infection came when he was only 2 weeks old, and he subsequently had tubes. Eden is also scheduled for an appointment with an ENT to evaluate whether she'll need them as well. But in the meantime we're just fighting those nasty ear aches off.

Snow Angles

While we were in Idaho for Christmas we taught Laura how to make snow angels, she actually makes a really cute little imprint despite her not-quite-coordinated flailing. We were in grandma Rosey's front yard and Lesha managed to catch us all, except for Eden who had already gone inside. Thanks Le, I hope you don't mind me lifting this off your blog, but it was too great of a photo!