Real Stuff

I'm just having a tough day today and I need to write it out.
I'm feeling like a bit of a failure in the mother department. Cross that over with dropping off gifts with my son's family and thoughts in that department and, well, it's pretty much a recipe for "is there something wrong with me?".
This is a dumb question, but how in the heck do you reconcile yourself with not being perfect?
It's a stupid question, I know, but some days I just can't get over my own imperfections. I want
to have kids who are well behaved and respectful. I don't know the perfect recipe for making them
that way. I'm trying my best to help the 3 of them the best I know how, but sometimes I wish I had a partner who could see things the way I see them. I wish I had a partner who could be around more to help me when I'm feeling overwhelmed. A best friend who could have the time to give me when I'm having a rough day and feeling like I could use a hug. And a comforting shoulder to lay my head on. I realize, I'm a very emotional person. I am a deep thinker who feels things deeply. It sometimes takes me weeks to realize what the heck is bugging me and why I can't seem to find full happiness.  Call it what you will, it's just been one of those days. When a lot of stuff hit the fan and I was left picking up the pieces by myself. Some things definitely need to change in my life, but I'm just not sure what.
        Truthfully, Christmas this year feels sad. My relationship is not what it once was with my son's family. It makes my heart ache. It makes me worry a little for him and for myself and my family as well as his. How to fix it, I don't know.
       My kids are growing up so fast and suddenly we're dealing with things that feel like they're just smacking me in the face with no prior warning. Not big stuff and yet it is big stuff.
       Reed is gone too much and is too worried about work stuff and just doesn't have enough time for himself so I feel guilty asking for his time for me and our family.
        I'm feeling anxious, and worried and slightly depressed. Eating chocolate and any other carb I can get my hands on hasn't helped one bit. I feel as if I may not be being true to myself in every relationship in my life and that makes me sad. I've been there before and it got me in a whole lot of trouble. I don't want to go to that place of unhappiness and frustration with myself again.
        I feel spread so thin and yet Reed and I feel like we're supposed to be adding to our family. Yesterday I was feeling okay about that, even good! Today I am thinking, "What the heck are we thinking?!?".   Most of all I wish I could sit down and have a conversation with my husband about all of this and feel like he was actually listening. Yup...... I'd pay any amount of money to make that happen.

We Need An Update!

So, new things around here. These would include:

               Mirren got her first tooth yesterday. Hallelujah. Saints be praised.
  She likes to do "The Wheels on the Bus" arms, but she can't/won't clap. Go figure. She can also stand, but doesn't want to do it in case it might lead to walking because heaven forbid she try to be like everybody else. LOL  She loves to do EVERYTHING her older sisters do. If we don't include her, she will get upset. Or not go to sleep until after we're done not including her in scripture reading/singing a lullaby. And then insist on being laid back down again. She got pretty animated at the dentist office today. I think if they had let her, she would have had a tooth cleaning. Just because her older sisters did it. Her little tooth stub would have been so shiny! ;)

           Bronwyn is still herself. She has almost mastered writing her whole name. W's are hard to write. She keeps writing them upside down like an M. She has begun making up songs about any nonsensical thing. It's pretty funny. It also confirms how much she is going to LOVE the kid microphone she is getting for Christmas, and how tired we are going to get of it. She is still the finder of all things lost, and likes to put things away where they go. She is totally my kid in that department. Not in the finder of all things though. That's a total anomaly. She is looking forward to Primary. I will be one of her primary teachers. That should be interesting....  I sure hope she doesn't scream in class the way she screams at home....we're working on that one. Being gluten-free totally agrees with her, except I am thinking she may have a dairy allergy. She still has weird excema over a large part of her body. It's odd. I need to try going dairy free for her to see if it helps.

       Aftyn is reading! I love it!! I love the homework she brings home from preschool that includes sentences that she can sight read. A-may-zing! She loves preschool. She has become a different girl since starting it. She is a huge help at home. She is such a big help with Mirren. Everytime she picks Mirren up for me, Mirren starts laughing. It is the cutest thing! Aftyn is a fun and quirky little girl. We sure love her! She wants a pet more than anything. It is so cute. I told her a few weeks ago that when we were done having kids, I wanted to get a puppy. So now she tells me all the time that she wishes we could have some more kids so we could get that puppy. Oh what a kid!

      Reed is busy with tradeshows off and on and when he's not busy with tradeshows, he's busy with selling scales. Poor guy, he's pretty busy most of the time. It's nice when he gets to take a little breather and relax. He works so hard for us and tries so hard to be there for us as well even when he's out of town. We sure love him!

       I am doing well. My neck has decided to revolt, probably due to stress, so right now I've been trying to take it easy and ice it and whatever else I can do to help it not hurt. I'm hoping it will be better in a few days. It's only been hurting since Sunday night. I'll be fine. Mom's have to be, right? In the meantime, we're all decorated up for Christmas over here. Sure wish I could post some pictures. Oh well.

    There's your update! We're alive!!

Speaking of Normal....

My computer is seriously having issues. Time to either have someone fix it or find/purchase a great program to find and fix all the yucky stuff slowing our computer down and not allowing me to upload pictures or video AT ALL anymore. Boo!

In awesome news, did I mention our car's transmission went kablooey? And after much deliberation, we decided to fix it and keep it around for at least another year and then sell it. In the meantime, it's time to make the fateful decision: minivan or SUV.  Our lives for the next 5 years could be affected by this one decision. *ominous music*
     Also, my niece and her husband have earned sainthood for 1) following me slowly in their car when they noticed my car acting wonky  2) helping me push my car full of 1 crying baby, 1 loud toddler, and a 5 year old while listening to me sing "Pioneer Children sang as they walked and walked and walked" 3) Picking me up the next morning to drive me to the car so it could be towed to a mechanic AND watching my children for me while I did that (They're magic, what can I say?).
Seriously, they are complete angels in my book!

 Our little MirrenPantsMagoo turns 1 in 4 days. I'm going to be in denial until then. She seriously may surprise us all by walking by then. In the meantime, her army crawl has become so fast that she's more like a snake. She has a fast side lean/swing/side lean combo that gets her places pretty quick! She does it at bathtime and she's like a fish because she gets through the water so fast. LOL She is also finally calling me "mama" as a name and not a sound. She's had "dada" down for a while.

Bronwyn continues to make us all smile with her "you remember what happened laaaaaast time".... My new favorite pasttime is taking naps with her, in my bed of course. She always obliges me by telling me a story before sleep, and she is always HAPPY to take a nap with me! Score!! We've definitely started a new tradition with her and I on Sundays.

Aftyn had her primary program today. She whispered to the primary president, who was helping all the little kids with their parts, that she knew her part and so the president sat down and Aftyn stood at the podium by herself and said her part perfectly! Woot! Go Aftyn! I was so proud of her and I knew she was proud of herself. Aftyn has been in preschool a little over a month now and this last week her homework had her practicing reading sentences! Wow!! To go from hesitant to sounding out words to reading sentences by sight, this girl has made some huge progress! I am so grateful for her teacher and for Aftyn's eagerness to try new things and learn. She has seemed to be a whole lot more confident and happy with herself over the past month as well.

Normal

Over the last almost 3 years, my life has been at best topsy turvy. 

It felt like there was always something changing, something to lament. 

But tonight, for the first time in a really long time I'd say I'm pretty good. 

That things are settling and that everything in my life feels normal. 

And you know what, I will take normal.

Sure there are things not going the way I'd like.

My life is far from perfect.

But I've finally figured out that life is that way.

I've learned to deal with it that way.

It's how it's supposed to be.

If something weren't going the opposite direction of what I'd hoped,

I'd think there were something wrong!

So here's to my normal, imperfect, and lovely life.

Halloween Pumpkins!

Mirren Video

You should definitely CLICK HERE.

Updates on the girls

Bronwyn has been going through a particularly rough patch lately but I think we're getting through it. She wants to be treated like a 2 year old with no accountability but the reality is she's nearly 3 and a half. She's starting to wrap her brain around it.

Bronwyn is certainly keeping busy lately. Sadly, it's not always a good kind of busy. She has been spending a lot of time enjoying consequences but seems to be figuring out how not to have them. She loves earning marbles and helping Mom and Dad and her sisters. She and Aftyn love to play together most of the time with fairly minimal hitting. Her latest thing is "movies". She loves to go in the backyard and basically act out a play that she comes up with right on the spot. Her imagination is incredible.

Here is a recent MagnaDoodle drawing of hers. She's currently grounded from crayons. So her drawings look like this.

 She loves to play with Mirren and Mirren loves to pull her hair. Bronwyn gets the biggest laughs and easiest smiles from Mirren. 

    We were so blessed to find Aftyn a preschool that is small and taught by a lady who used to live in our ward and has a son Aftyn's age who is in the preschool. She is doing really well and goes 3 days a week and is FINALLY learning how to sound out words and other fun things. She is still really focused on animals and learning about them. This kid wouldn't surprise me if she grew up to be a zoologist. She has recently become aware of how to charm Mirren into smiling and she loves it! It totally surprises me because Aftyn has seemed to be pretty hands off so far with babies but she loves to get Mirren smiling. She also loves to feel like she's helping to keep Mirren safe and away from harm. She is a big help around our house most of the time. 

She's always on the floor like this.

Mid army crawl

Mirren is 11 months old. 11 months old!!! I can't believe it. It makes me sad and yet we just love this girl. She was a missing part of our puzzle. She helps unify our family more and generally brings us all together for love of her. She has the sweetest and most winning smiles. She gives the best hugs, to me only Reed says. She has started to pull up to things in earnest but on the whole is taking a very relaxed route to walking. She can manage to get up on her knees to get on her bum after crawling, but she never crawls on her hands and knees. She only ever army crawls. She's pretty fast at it!  She is showing interest in standing and we try to encourage that from her but most of the time we just follow her lead. She's hitting all of her milestones so we're not worried.
  She loves food. She makes happy sounds while she chews. She loves oatmeal, fruit, bananas, applesauce, scrambled eggs and pancakes, graham crackers, cheerios, cheese, yogurt, etc. The list could go on and on. She loves to eat and cries whenever I try to eat something in front of her. Evidently she feels that she should be eating if I am eating. She has gained nearly 2 pounds according to our scale since starting food. Her thighs have gotten so chunky! She has also grown a lot too. She is still toothless! That is some kind of record. We've never had a baby wait until 11 months to get teeth. Here in a couple of days she will be 11.5 months. Crazy. I don't mind but I just want to feel like her random crankiness has some kind of purpose.
   She sleeps through the night well, most of the time unless she's teething or cold, and her hair is definitely growing. She sort of looks like a clown with her hair being so curly and all hitting right around her ears. Oh well. It's that awkward stage of growing hair and she's just hitting it a little later than our first two. She has enough hair on top to easily get two little pigtails on top and she looks so adorable when I do it.

                                              

My Kitchen girls

My girls got this awesome kitchen set last Christmas. It was a hand me down from their aunt whose own kids are much too big for it now.  Mirren is getting to that fun age where she wants to do everything her big sisters do. Hence, this photo.

This was the first time Mirren had ever stood up and held on to furniture. She was excited and nervous about falling. She was so funny and cute.

And determined to be just like Bronwyn

Then I noticed that the kitchen set had a little seat for babies to sit in and be fed. Mirren decided she wanted to try it out.

She loved it! What's better than your sister feeding you invisible food with a play fork?!?

Look at how happy she was!! Ha ha ha!!! Her smile tells you just how much she loved being included and even being fed nothing. LOL

  The best part is Mirren still loves to go in the girls room and play with the kitchen. She makes a beeline for the girls room anytime I put her on the floor upstairs and you can find her happily playing in there whether her sisters are in there or not. There's always something interesting to play with in there!

Bronwyn created a mural in our house

Here is what happens when your child finds JUST THE BROKEN OFF TIP of a big fat crayon. Her coloring was literally on almost every wall of our stairwell.

No complaining whatsoever. 4 hours later she had managed to scrub most of it and I think I worked the desire to make murals on our walls out of her. She was a good worker.

 So the majority of the morning, with no breakfast until her work was done, she scrubbed her way down the crayoned walls. Evidently she had lunch and then the pictures below happened.
Your guess about why is as good as mine because my memory fails me. But the pictures are amusing!

                                         Clearly the work brought out the sparkle in her eyes. :) 

Oregon Coast Days 4-7

I forgot to mention in my prior post that we went over to my parents/Suzette/Laura/Alyson and Trevor's beachhouse on our first night at the beach and had dinner. It was heavenly and so nice. Yum!! Nothing like homemade food when you're good and hungry. Thanks for feeding us even though the kids just played. Reed and I appreciated the yummy food!

So, we woke up on our first day at the beach and it was heavenly. It was so quiet. There was so much space! Beautiful views out the windows! We just lounged and relaxed until around 10:30 when we started to get ready to meet all of my family at the beach. We didn't get there until a little after 11 and arrived at the same time as my brother Jon and his family and my sister Jenn and her family. What timing! :)
     We all hauled all of our kids and towels and paraphernalia out to the beach and set up a good spot. The next few hours sped by as the girls played in the water, Reed jumped full body into the waves while everyone else watched enviously and not enviously. The water was COLD! But it certainly did look fun to have the guts to get out there in the waves like he did. I helped people dig in the sand to build sand castles, Reed kept building a sand castle right at the edge of the water and then the bigger waves would crash in and knock it down and he'd start over again. He was bound and determined to beat the waves. He finally gave up after about 45 minutes. It was also fun to just sit and chat with my sisters and nieces and nephews. It was such a fun afternoon. Around 2:30 or 3, I could tell it was time to go. I started feeling hot, which is odd at the Oregon Coast. So we packed ourselves up and said goodbye to everyone who was also packing up. We were pooped! About an hour or so after we got home, I looked in the mirror only to discover one side of my body was sunburned. LOL  I don't recall ever getting sunburned before on the Oregon Coast! Luckily I'd been pretty vigilant with all the kids about sunscreen so they were pretty okay except for a few body parts. Aftyn's poor poor upper leg. :(

Grandpa, can I fly your kite?

It looked like a lot more fun when Grandpa was flying it.

This picture is just cute. Laura and her hat. Bronwyn being Bronwyn.

Joy!

Digging in the sand

Alyson was trying to build an amazing sandcastle. It looks pretty good here!

Carter and Aunty Suzette and Grandma

The next few days were kind of a blur. Reed took Aftyn and Bronwyn to the Tillamook Cheese Factory and I stayed home so Mirren could get a MUCH needed nap. They had lots of fun and brought home a carton of ice cream to share! One morning we went to our beach in Cape Kiwanda and found sand dollars and lots of other whole shells. It was so much fun! One evening we met up with Alyson and her kids and my parents and Suzette and she and I went on a shell finding hunt. That was pretty fun! It was always the best way to end the evening, out on the beach watching the sun set with the kids playing in the sand. So so lovely. Reed would then be talking about how much fun it would be to own our own beach house so we could come anytime we wanted. Oh Reed. LOL

 Far too quickly our time at the beach was done. We drove one eternally long day all the way back to Nampa to spend two more nights with Grandma and Grandpa Bishop. I took the girls to the aquarium in Boise on Friday while Reed went into his office and worked. We had a ton of fun petting fish and looking at lots and lots of varieties of sea life, especially since we had just so recently been at the beach!

Petting stingrays

Mirren just watched

Later that night we got together with Reed's brothers Mark and Brian and their wives and kids and had a much needed and fun visit. 2 of the little girl cousins stayed over for a fun little girls sleepover at Grandma's house and all the girls stayed up SO late! Which was great because Reed and I decided to wake up early and try to get on the road by 5 am so we could get home early enough to get our normal Saturday things done at our house, especially after being gone a whole week! We made it back to Idaho Falls by 10:45 and enjoyed being home after such a long vacation.

     We so enjoyed our little vacation and can't wait to go back for a much LONGER time next time!!

The Oregon Coast -Days 1-3

Over a month ago, we took a fabulous much anticipated trip to the beach. It was rather last minute.
It was rather worth it. We took a whole fabulous week vacation away from home to do it. We had so much fun and made so many memories!

We left Saturday afternoon and drove to Grandma and Grandpa Bishop's house. We got there well past midnight. We were tired! But excited!!
  The next morning, Sunday, we got up and went to 9 am sacrament meeting at a different ward. We went back, ate and re-packed the car and slowly (and hotly!) made our way to our motel in Hermiston, Oregon. We got a free night at the Comfort Inn. They even upgraded our room for free!! We loved that place. Awesome staff. But gross eggs for breakfast. :( And no sausage. LOL

 Monday morning we got up and going by 10 am! It was finally beach day!
      (These are our excited faces, in case you couldn't tell. LOL)

 We drove all day by the Columbia River it seemed. We couldn't check into our rented beach house until 4 pm, so our route there, we stayed near Tierra del Mar, was via my childhood beach. Cannon Beach. We got there around 3:45 and boy were we ready to get out of that car. Reed had been convinced that we would never get there!  
       I was still familiar with the area, so I walked us from the public parking to the public restrooms, yuck, to the public access road that goes onto my beach. Right next to the homes we always stayed in when I was young. I was so so so excited to get to share my beach with my family. Reed's reaction was my absolute favorite. As we walked up over the berm of sand that takes you onto the beach, Reed said "This is AWESOME!". I couldn't wipe the grin off my face. I sat my kids down in the sand soon after and took these pictures.

What else would you expect but for her to be eating sand. It was a wet day and the whole time we were there, Mirren's hair was in tight little curls. LOTS of random peope commented on how cute her curls were.

This makes me heart so happy

So so so happy.

Of course we had to go get our feet wet in the ocean. Our older girls have now been in both the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans! The tide was out so we walked over to Haystack Rock and looked at the tide pools to see if we could find any sea life.

There were lots of crabs hiding in the water under some of the Needles of Haystack Rock

 

Family photos by Haystack rock!!

            

           

We went into town and had some ice cream. We wanted to go and look in some of the shops but most of them closed at 5 and we literally made it into town 5 minutes after 5. :/  Oh well. None of the town was the same from my childhood. Kind of sad. But still nice to see.

We drove to Cape Kiwanda where our house was located, had to stop in Tillamook at Fred Meyer to get food for the next 4 days. We didn't get to our house until 9 I think and by that time we were all exhausted and fell into bed.