Some Thoughts & Little Things

I've been wanting to blog for a while now and haven't been able to just sit down and do it.  Last week I was sick--so sick.  I haven't been that sick in a long time.   I just felt awful for 5 days and it felt like an eternity.  I spent most of that time on the couch or in my bed while my kids watched tons of TV.  I kept wishing I could just sleep and sleep but I couldn't so I'd lay there trying to sleep.  I didn't have any books that I felt up to reading until one day when I turned to my blog books.  I loved reading some of them again.  I was amazed at the ways that we were able to see the kids' personalities developing when they were so tiny and how clearly we can see those traits today.  I laughed about the cute little sayings that I'd forgotten about.  I loved the pictures of my kids with their chubby little cheeks that are thinning out more and more every day.  I'm so thankful for those books and that I have taken the time to blog these last 8 years.  I felt more motivation to keep it going.

Another thing that I kept thinking while reading was, "Man, what happened to me?"  In some ways I feel like I have really gotten lazy.  I used to be so driven to teach my preschoolers and take time for them and now I often feel like I'm coming up with ways to keep them busy with something so I can do other things.  And my poor girls--I sometimes feel like they get so little of my time now that they need a lot less (do they?).  Simply calling this laziness is not being very gentle (or honest) with myself.  This last year has been really hard for me.  I've been depressed a lot and some days it was all I could do just to cope with day-to-day life.  I needed help and thankfully I was able to get it and began to feel the fog lifting.  I had some great, honest talks with some people which helped me so much too.   Just being more open about it helps a lot (hence this post, I guess).  But, it has been kind of a rough year.  Who knew my 30's would start off with such a bang?  Geez.  

Anyway, I'm at a point now where I do feel like things are possible.  I am seeing some bad habits that I have developed that have not helped me to feel better and I'm trying to find ways to change them.   I started to feel this panic sometimes when my kids would approach me with demands or questions so I just started to park them in front of the TV or the computer more often than I should have to avoid those moments.  Or, I'd numb my own unpleasant feelings by scrolling through facebook or whatever.  Anyway, I'm currently in the middle of a social media fast I've been doing during the month of May.  I don't know what I was expecting but I honestly don't think it's made a huge impact in my life.  It has definitely helped, though.  I've certainly read a lot more books this month than I normally would have because I'd often be on the computer at night.  I started to notice the times when I'd really want to get on and it tended to be when I was feeling lonely or isolated.  The problem with going on facebook or instagram when I'm feeling like that is that it doesn't tend to help at all.  I do miss seeing updates from family and friends, though, and I will be glad to be connected that way again.  I'm definitely hoping to keep it in check better, though.  If nothing else, it's been a good exercise in self control.  

I could still do better with the kids.  Nate spends way too much time playing Wii or playing on the computer while Eli sleeps.  Eli is so nice to me and takes like 2-3 hour naps every day (he does have trouble going down at night but I'm not ready to give up the naps).  It's so easy for me to just take the whole time for myself to nap or read or whatever but that adds up to a lot of media time for Nate.  Plus I miss out on good one-on-one time with him.  We do sometimes play Wii together--he loves that.  Or we'll play board games when Eli's not around to mess it up.  I also try to make him have an hour of quiet time but I haven't been as regular about that so he fights it.  One thing that I have managed to stick to pretty consistently, even during my hard times, is to make Nate practice reading before he can have media time.  It has made such a difference and he is turning into a great reader.  We started out just having him read a few words or pages in the book but now he can read whole easy reader books to me.  Just last Sunday he was able to give a talk in Primary all by himself!  He did great.  

Life is good.  Here are some little things that make it so good...

I keep posting all of Nate's selfies but I can't help myself.  

I have so many of them and they make me happy.

Nate also took this one of me folding laundry and I like it, even if it is blurry:

It's fun to get a glimpse of yourself during plain old regular life. :)

Here's a sign Nate made:

It says "no enchrints" (no entrance) :)

One of Nate's favorite things right now is to hang up all of his favorite pictures he's made in his room. I should probably try to contain them all to one area eventually but for now it's pretty cute. 

This is over his bed:

He and Natalie even made Eli some pictures to hang up over his bed:

Here is what's on his door:

 

He made copies of some of his favorite books to hang up.  He also made an "I love Eli" sign, and then made one for Eli to hang up for Nate! :)

Here is the top of his door.  He calls this the "place of honor":

Of course it's full of Mario stuff.  I love that you can find any kind of coloring pages you'd ever want online.

Natalie and Nate were having a duel one night with their wands and I thought it was hilarious how they were holding them.  Also, Eli had to join in with his cape and wand:

Excuse the dirty window. :)

One day Eli was pointing at this family picture and said, "Me!"

No, it's not you, but it looks just like you!

Another gorgeous sunrise one morning:

One Sunday evening, the kids put on a Royal Cute Show starring Prince Babyness the Third (Eli).  They passed out invitations and everything.  Basically they helped Eli show us different things he could do, like riding his little bike and jumping on the trampoline.  It was really cute and we got a video of it.  

Here's the picture before the performance:

Elizabeth didn't make it in the picture but she helped, too.

I got a call one day that they were in need of someone to coach Natalie's soccer team.  I didn't really have much of an excuse so I said I'd do it.  Joe and I haven't really put in our time with our kids' sports yet.  It ended up being a lot of fun and I'm glad I did it.  It took up a lot of time, too, so I was glad when it was over.  Luckily it was a short season through the city so it was low key and over in a month.  I was impressed that the girls, for the most part, were all getting into the games and really trying.  It was hard to teach them much beyond the basics, though, so they were still playing bunch ball.  Sadly, we were only able to win one game but some games were pretty close.  I think they had fun, though, so hopefully they won't give up on soccer yet.  It was a lot of fun having that time with Natalie, especially.  She really played hard and had some great shots.  She played goalie for one half, too, and had three saves, all with her feet!  She kept forgetting to use her hands.  She loved playing forward and really ran hard.  She is pretty fast.  

Here's the official pictures:

Three girls didn't make it to pictures.  They were a fun group of girls.

April was a busy month for us because Elizabeth was in softball, too.  She expressed an interest  in playing softball so we seized it and signed her up.  Sadly, they didn't have many girls sign up so they ended up combining a bunch of age groups.  She ended up playing with 13 year-olds who'd been playing their whole lives so of course there was a huge difference in ability.  She was the second youngest on the team and had never played before so it was a little rough.  She didn't love it and complained about going but she made it through.  I think it was good for her to have some more experience with a team sport.  She got one hit on her first at bat but the pitcher caught it and she was out.  Sadly, she didn't get any more hits.  She read the pitches well, though, and got walked a lot so she scored some runs.  She went up against some really tough pitchers.  We were very proud of her and it was fun watching her play.  

I didn't get any still pictures of her games but I do have her official picture:

I love that picture. :)

One day the boys went out to cheer for Joe while he mowed the lawn.

I thought it was adorable:

I caught this little series one day, too, while Joe was helping Eli with his foot.

I love it so much.

That boy sure loves his daddy.  

I sure love them both.

My Birthday & Easter

I had a great birthday this year.  Joe and the kids woke me up with breakfast, cards and a decorated house.  They always make me feel so loved.  Later that day, while Nate was at preschool, Eli and I went on a bike ride.  It was a bit chilly but a beautiful day:

Eli loves bike rides, even if he kicks me in the back a lot.  :)

That night we went out to eat at Outback so I could get some cheese fries.  :)  It was a bit of a ridiculous outing with Eli being crazy and because Nate and Eli both managed to spill their full cups of lemonade all over the floor.  Luckily, we had a super-nice waiter who made up for it.  We went home and I got to have carrot cake and ice cream and open my presents.  It was wonderful.  

I got this painting that I love so much:

Just a couple of days later we drove to Utah so I could run in my race.  I stayed with Kari and Katie the night before at Katie's cousin's house which was right by the race so we didn't have to get up too early (still before 6, though).  We had a blast talking and laughing the night before but we still managed to get to bed at a decent hour.  I was so afraid that I would sleep through the race (especially since I had a dream that I did just that a couple of nights before) that I kept waking up to check the time on phone.  Finally, it was time to get up and go.

Before the race:

It was a pretty cold morning and I couldn't feel my toes for a couple of miles but after that I warmed up and it was a nice day.  I tried to stick by Katie for as long as I could and made it about 4 miles (Kari was running the 10k).  She was much faster than me.  I think that was good because it pushed my pace a little bit.  After that, I just tried to hang on the best I could.  I was a little depressed when the 2h15min pace runner passed me.  I was hoping to finish faster than that.  Luckily, I was able to pass her in the end so I felt pretty good.  My time was 2 hours and 12 minutes.  It was a great experience even though I felt pretty dead afterward.  It was a big boost to me to accomplish something so difficult.  

Right after the race:

We got cleaned up a little bit and then had a super delicious brunch at Cafe Zupa's.  Then we parted ways and I drove to Joe's dad's house to meet back up with everyone for Easter/Conference fun.

The kids got to color Easter eggs:

Later we went to a local school to let the kids burn some energy.  We had fun playing wiffle ball, flying kites, and having an egg hunt.

On Easter morning, everyone was so great and humored us in our sunrise devotional tradition.  Unfortunately we didn't take into account the mountains right by their house so sunrise was actually much later than we thought.  Oops!  It was a great little devotional, though, and the kids were quite good.

We had our cinnamon rolls and watched some Easter videos before Conference started.  It was a great way to feel the spirit of the day.  We had such a blast being with family.  It was a great weekend!

Talking

One of my very favorite things in the world is watching a toddler's face while they struggle to formulate their first sentences.  It is awesome and adorable and quite miraculous to watch, I think.  Eli is starting to talk more and more and coming up with some awesome words and phrases.  I wanted to record some of his current sayings that I love.

-"B, E, N": Eli loves letters and knows all of them already, even most of the lowercase letters!  It's kind of surprising since he still says "ga" or "ga-ga" a lot of the time.  Anyway, whenever he wants to color he usually wants to try and write letters and he will say, "B, E, N!  B, E, N!"  I guess those are his favorite letters.  We think it's hilarious.
-"2 ga-mas": When my mom had her surgeries we started praying for her every night.  Eli was very adamant about praying for his "2 ga-mas" and still whenever anyone says grandma he says "2 ga-mas" over and over again.  The funny thing is that any number that is greater than 1 is 2 to Eli ("Two fishies! Two cars!" etc) so I think he means all of his ga-mas.  He loves them all. He frequently points to random older ladies in stores and says, "Ga-ma!" I'm just hoping he doesn't offend someone at some point.  :)
-"{yuck sound}":  It's hard to describe this sound but it starts with a "d" and kind of rhymes with the Scottish "loch".  It's the sound he makes whenever he thinks something is yucky.  It has cracked us up on more than one occasion.  Especially the first time he tried mustard.
-"Piggie and Pfff":  Eli still calls lots of animals by their sounds, including his favorite elephant, Gerald, that he got for Christmas.  He loves Piggie and Pfff and sleeps with them every night.

-"Baby":  For awhile, Eli wouldn't say his own name and whenever we said that he was Eli he would say, "No, baby!"  He would point to himself in pictures and say, "baby!"  I thought it was adorable.  Sadly, he doesn't really do this anymore and can now say "E-yi" for his name.  It's pretty darn cute, too.
-"Mama, big":  Eli loves to classify things as big and little.  According to Eli, everyone in our family is big except him.  This makes Nate feel pretty good.  :)
-"Ga-pooh":  This is what Eli calls Winnie the Pooh.  He loves it when Lizzy lets him borrow the Winne the Pooh stuffed animal that she got when she was a baby and lets him sleep with it.
-"ice":  This means a number of things: actual ice, but also a drink of water, or snow.  He likes ice like his mom.  :)
-"Soo-why!":  He takes after his Harry Potter-loving siblings and loves to wear a cape and go around with his wand pointing it at people and yelling "Soo-why!" or "Stupefy!"
-"Pop!": Whenever the toast pops up and is done cooking, Eli loves to yell "pop!"  This has since progressed to anything that is finished or any timer that beeps--if the laundry is done he will say, "Mama, pop!" If the microwave or the oven timer goes off it's the same.  He makes sure that I hear those timers.  :)
-"Pee-cool":  This is how he says "preschool" and I love it. i.e. "Nate go pee-cool?"

Just since I first starting composing this post, he has been talking more and more.  He finally decided that he wanted to communicate and now he says some new word I haven't heard before every day.  It is such a fun phase to be in, but also a little sad because you recognize how fast he is growing and changing.  We sure love our little "E-yi".

Culture Nights: Brazil & Australia

I need to catch up on a couple of Culture Nights we've had since we moved here.  We're still not on a regular schedule for when to do them so we often go months in between.  One of these days we'll get on that.  We always have so much fun with them.

First we did Brazil.  We got to have some company this time--Marsha brought Christine, Hallie, TJ & Matt over to join us.  I discovered a site called Global Table Adventures a while back and that has been a really good resource for recipes.  I made this feijoada, along with a rice recipe that I found in the comments of that post from someone who was Brazilian (I can't find it there now).  I also sauteed some kale in coconut oil and served that as well.  Then we had this passion fruit mousse for dessert.  Unfortunately I couldn't find the right passion fruit concentrate so it was overly sweet.  Oh well, it was a pretty tasty meal.  We presented a little bit on the things we learned (Elizabeth did the Amazon, Natalie did animals, I did music, and Nate and Joe did sports) and then we watched Rio.  It was a fun night.  Sadly, I didn't get a single picture.

Just last Friday we did Australia.  We had these Aussie burgers with chips (fries).  When I went to get the link to that recipe, I noticed that we forgot the pineapple!  Darn...that would have been good.  They were pretty tall burgers, anyway, though.

Our version:

The kids wouldn't put the pickled beets on their burgers but I made them try them.

Elizabeth did put a fried egg on hers.

I also bought some Vegemite online so we sampled some of that on toast:

This sums up what the kids thought of it:

Ha!

After dinner we presented what we'd learned.

Natalie did animals:

Elizabeth talked about the convicts that were sent to Australia:

I helped Nate make a powerpoint about Australian sports:

I talked about geography and climate and Joe talked about the indigenous people.  We wanted to watch The Rescuers Down Under but we ran out of time.  We did watch the music video to Men at Work's "Down Under" though, so that counts for something. :)  

6 Months

It has been almost 6 months since our big move.  I've been wanting to write down some of the things I miss about our last area and things we love about here.  So here goes...

Things I miss about the bay area:
-Our pool.  Sure it was a pain sometimes and made me paranoid often, but it was super nice, too.  I loved being able to swim laps for exercise right in my own backyard.  I loved sitting out there watching the kids swim all afternoon.  I loved the couple of times we went night swimming--once on the 4th of July underneath the fireworks.  Especially now that spring/summer is coming on fast, I think I'll be missing it even more.
-Our friends.  I miss all the good people there.  It was hard not being all that close to family, especially after we had been only 8 minutes away from cousins, but it kind of forced us to make friends quicker.  Also, it was such a transient area that people tended to make friends fast and welcome new people in.  It has been a little bit tougher to make friends here, I think just because people tend to be more settled and already have networks of friends and family.  But, they have definitely been friendly and kind and I think the friendships will come.  Still, I look back and miss the kind gestures when we were brand new to our last area: the immediate friend requests on facebook, those who made sure I had the park day schedules right away, the dinner invitations, our super nice stake president and his wife who were in our ward and kindly invited our family over for FHE complete with letting our kids play with his homemade water rocket thing.  Lots of good people.
-The diversity.  It was cool being in the minority for awhile there.  I think it was good for our kids and for all of us.  I loved meeting people who'd come from all over.
-The food.  So many great restaurants within reach.  Some of our very favorites were dishdash, The Banana Leaf, and Sweet Tomatoes (popular with our kids).  It makes me hungry just thinking about it.

Delicious food from dishdash:

-The beach.  Oh how I wish I could just up and drive to the beach some days.  I miss that so much.

Things I love about here:

-Being close to family again.  Joe and I have never been the types that have a strong desire to live right by family.  We love getting together with family, of course, but it's also nice to have a little bit of space to appreciate the times you're together even more.  Still, the few times we have lived close to family (I define that as 20 min. or less), it has been so nice.  It's nice to be able to get together for dinner regularly, make it to events in the kids' lives, and just let the cousins play together so often.  It is so fun.

-The sky.  It seems so much bigger here.  I'm not sure why exactly.  We have seen so many beautiful sunrises and sunsets since we've been here.  

-Our house.  It is just perfect for us and I love it.  It's taking me forever, like always, to get it decorated but it's starting to come along.  Someday I'll finally get some window coverings up.

-The canyon.  I really love running along the canyon.  I don't know if there could be a better place to run in the mornings.  Just a couple of weeks ago, I finally completed my goal of running rim to rim and it felt great!  There is something about completing a goal like that that really pumps you up.  I've done it again since then and hope to keep being able to do it.  I also want to be able to run all the way up the hill.  I haven't quite mastered that yet.  

-Everything is cheaper and there's no traffic.  The benefits of a smaller town--cheap preschool, cheap kids activities, cheap food, cheap insurance, utilities, and housing.  It makes things seem less stressful.  I never have to sit in traffic, either.  I don't miss that.

Well, I could probably keep going on and on but I'll stop here.  There are positives and negatives about every place.  My goal is to try and focus on having gratitude for all the positives.  

Lately

A few weeks back when it was still cold, we stopped on our way down the canyon to check out the frozen waterfalls.  It was so cool!  We even saw a girl dressed as Elsa having a Frozen photo-shoot.  :)

Natalie won her class spelling bee so she made it to the school-wide one:

She did great!  Man was it nerve-wracking watching her.  I started to forget how to spell things myself.  She got 6th place, and was definitely the youngest left when she got out.  She missed the word "appreciate"--she spelled it "appreiciate". She was so hoping to win.  Maybe next year!  Elizabeth was sad to have gotten second in her class spelling bee after going head-to-head against another girl for 14 rounds and losing on the word "bizarro".  They are both really good spellers.

We had a fun Valentine's Day.

Eli got to do some fun crafts and enjoy a delicious cupcake at playgroup:

After some procrastination and last-minute stress, Elizabeth finished up her science project and ended up getting 3rd place for her grade!  She wrapped bananas in different materials to see which would stay fresh the longest.  She did all of that work herself, although I did end up helping her with her display since it got down to the wire.  I kept trying to convince her to back everything with construction paper, type and print things out instead of hand-writing everything, and to make her title bigger.  She wanted none of that and I finally backed off.  Why does it take me so long to do that sometimes?  

Here she is with her project:

Eli wanted to be in the picture, too:

Nate has become such a wonderful note-writer.  He is often found writing sweet notes to his family members and we all love them.

Here's one where he wanted to write "I love you Eli" in as many different ways as he could.  I helped with the cursive version:

Here's a great family picture he drew in preschool:

I love how Eli is saying "ga-ga".  He really does say that all the time.

I also have to include these awesome signs that have been on the door to the loft for quite awhile.

I love how disco dancing/music is the epitome of weird and funny to my kids. :)

The kids also made this awesome block city one day:

I love when they're creative.

Natalie and Eli dressing up in Dad's and Grandpa Hall's old things:

Natalie on crazy hair day:

Eli, Nate and I having our first picnic outside on a beautiful warm day:

Hooray for spring!

We got to go down to Utah for Archer's blessing.  I only got this one picture of Jon reading to the boys before bed the night before when we stayed at their place:

I thought it was sweet.  

I love this little series I found on my phone that Natalie took of Eli:

 

 And these selfies from Nate:

And to finish it off, the girls had another piano recital tonight:

They did great and we followed it up with some free ice cream cones at Dairy Queen:

(well, not me--I had a blizzard because I'm the mom :)