Do you ever feel that the stresses in your life start to define you and you seem to feel a little lost among them?
 Maybe you haven't had a whole lot of stress or maybe you handle it all much better than I.

 I need a few days of rejuvenation and so I'm taking a few days off from the mundane.
I'm taking my girls to play outside.
I'm just going to take the rest of this week off of life and I'm going to play.
 Play and play and play because that's what my spirit feels like it needs.
So if you're looking for me, try looking somewhere unpredictable and fun and that's where you're most likely going to find me.
I'll even empty my camera's memory card and take pictures because we could use some new fun pictures of what's happening. 
I do have a few that were taken a few days ago at Small Farm, a little flower farm where you can cut a large bouquet of flowers for $5.95! :) And the fun of it is that you get to choose and cut all your own flowers. It was so fun just wandering around looking at all the varieties they were growing! The girls and I were super excited at being invited and had so much fun with these ladies and their kids. Thanks to Max for all these pictures!! (There are even more than this, but seriously, she took SO many cute ones I had to cut them back to just a few.)

One of Bronwyn's MANY friends who wanted to help her at the farm. :)

This was an additional little farm we were going to go play at but it was closed for ripening. So we took a picture to prove we were there.  :)

Life Rarely Works Out The Way You Think it Will

Life is weighing heavily on my mind lately. Maybe it's just that we are going through some of the normal stresses families have while going to school i.e. tight budget, low or no money, etc.

Here's a little back story for you on how I have felt about going to school.

Around the time Aftyn was a year old, it was summertime I recall, I was going about my day when a thought entered my mind that we needed to go to graduate school. Reed and I had talked about it before we had Aftyn but the financial stress of adding a child and then me being a stay-at-home mom had hurriedly made me change my mind about school. The idea of having even LESS money than we had was very unappealing. And scary. And I wanted nothing to do with less money and scary finances, so I had pushed the idea right out of my head and didn't like to talk about it. When the thought came to me that summer day I sat right down and cried. I knew it was inspiration from Heavenly Father. I knew it needed to happen. So I prayed right then and said if that was what needed to happen that I would do it and I would support Reed in getting his Masters degree. When Reed got home that day, I told him what I had felt we needed to do. He laughed when I told him I had cried about it because he knows me and my love of all things finance related. Not.

 I knew that we needed to start the ball rolling and a year and a half later, here we are. Going to school, living across the country from most of our family. Having new experiences, meeting new people, seeing a completely different way of life. And experiencing all of the fun of tight budgets, living on school loans as a family that were only meant for 1 or 2 people to live on. And what do you know, but the years of being frugal and living on a budget have actually come in handy! We have managed to live on those school loans just fine, with little outside help. Until now that is. Reed took the summer off of school so that he could work on finding an internship which he needs to graduate. No classes in the summer means no school loans to live off of for the summer. And now I see what really being poor is. Thankfully with Reed's paying internship that he just started last Thursday we will have money again, but before that things got tight. And still are tight. Lots of tears have been shed. Did you know that if you cry enough, it actually makes you physically tired? Who knew.Thankfully, there are programs to help families in our situation and we are making use of them. And we are grateful to have them for this time in our lives.

  I write this as a means of being honest, not asking for anything. I want people to know what we're honestly experiencing. I want to remember for myself how I'm feeling, what I've gone through and what I hope for our future. I want others who read this to know that you can get through going to school with kids. Most of our tears here are over the things our kids are doing without, and you know what? I think we miss them more than our kids do. I am grateful for my girls who help me remember to be grateful for the little things, that there are always things to smile and laugh about. Do I always remember to smile and laugh about them when I'm worrying what's happening financially with us? No, but it's nice to be reminded. This week I want to hug my kids more and worry less. I want to play on the floor and laugh with them and not worry so much about what to feed them. I want to leave my worries in Heavenly Father's hands so I can have some much needed play time with my kids.

**Post Edit: I love reading back in my posts. After reading this post, I'm feeling a lot better. And I remember just how blessed I am. And how much Heavenly Father is watching over my family. **

Fun Pictures of Our Past Week

We had the pleasure of being invited to one of Aftyn's friends' birthday parties this past weekend that included A REAL LIVE FIRETRUCK WITH REAL LIVE FIREMEN!!
       It was SO neat! All the kids were eating it up and the firemen even included a little demonstration of getting themselves all dressed up in their gear and then taking it all off again so that the kids could see that it's just a fireman behind all that gear that makes them look like a space martian. :) Here are some pictures of our fun party!

You can take the girl out of Idaho, but you can't take the Idaho out of the girl. Aftyn insists on wearing her cowboy boots whenever and wherever we will let her.  :) 

Sitting inside the firetruck

Our little firemiss  :)

This could be a good blackmail picture.  :)

Aftyn's favorite part of a cupcake is the icing, can you tell?

In other news, one morning after a particularly sleepless night for me, I fell asleep on the couch and Bronwyn was playing with toys on the floor.  I woke up to Reed saying, "I better take a picture of this!".
And here's your picture of the mischief Bronwyn was up to:

            She had located and bitten her way through a package of grape jello. She doesn't look too sorry about the whole thing, right?  :) She must not have loved it too much since she hasn't tried it since. Thank goodness.

Notice Anything New?

Friends. I've finally done it. I've been pondering about it for awhile, but I have finally started a sewing blog.
 If you don't know this about me, I really love refashioning my old clothes or any old clothes for that matter into something cute for Aftyn or Bronwyn. Mostly Aftyn right now. :)

 Reed suggested I make it a posting here and see if anyone has suggestions about how to make it better. So if you have any suggestions that might improve my little sewing blog, please feel free to let me know!

 In case you don't notice the link, look up to the left hand side of our blog and see the "Sew Talented" button? Click there and it will take you to my fun new project! By the way, thanks to Kamber for the starting piece of clothing!! :)

My Kids Make Me Laugh

This will be quick, but I just want to remember some of the goings on this week of my kids.

Bronwyn a few days ago, when Reed asked her a question, nodded her head, as in saying yes. First time either of us had ever seen it, and the little stinker did it at the right time! What do you make of that?

 Bronwyn just tonight folded her arms for our evening prayer, and even managed to hold them there for the whole prayer! At least from my point of view it looked like she did. Either way, too funny.

Bronwyn has already found her loud voice and likes to exercise it a lot. This week, I'm pretty sure, when we were "shhh-ing" her, she tried to do it back by putting her finger in her mouth and blowing. Pretty darn cute.

Bronwyn has finally mastered going down the stairs, but she doesn't like to do it.


Aftyn is starting to sing in key! :)

She is getting much more daring physically, trying to climb things at the playground that she would never have thought of before but now is feeling courageous and trying them out. She's still being safe. She's not that daring yet, thank goodness.

She got to hang out with some older kids after church today while I had choir and Reed had both girls. When we got home, she said the funniest thing to me. I can't remember what it is though . . . I'll have to see if Reed remembers. It was a very grown up saying, and Aftyn had no idea of what she was saying or its meaning but you could tell she felt very grown up in saying it to me. What a funny girl. She is growing up so quickly.

I completely forgot, but Reed and I started our swimming lessons with Aftyn this week. These are of the homeschooling variety. I found a great lesson plan from a swim teacher for Aftyn's age and those are the things we have been working with her on.  In just 4 days, I was surprised with how comfortable she suddenly was in the water! She was jumping into the water where she hadn't been before, jumping for her consists of sitting on her bum and projecting herself into the water from that point. She had never been daring enough to do that before. Once she has her little water belt on, that girl is swimming around that pool as if she owned it. And she could care less if Mom or Dad are right there beside her. And she's such a good little swimmer that we don't have to worry as much about her either.  I have been so impressed. She's doing great at holding her breath when she goes under the water from her little "jumps" into the pool. She lays on her back very easily and I've even been trying to show her how to gently kick her legs while floating on her back to try and get herself somewhere. She climbs out of the pool by herself. What a fish! She can't swim in the water without her swimming belt on, we've been trying to practice that little by little. It's probably like everything else she's learned, she'll understand and pick up how to do it when she's ready. We just try to give her the time and opportunity to practice her skills for 30 minutes everyday and she loves it! Any time she climbs out of the pool to jump back in, she always asks me, "we're not done yet?"  not wanting to get out yet. She is her happiest while swimming I would safely venture to say.

**I should point out, in case you think Aftyn or her parents are incredible, you should know that Aftyn had swimming lessons last year which helped immensely and gave us an idea of how they go at her age. And helped her learn to like the water as much as she does now. **

If Nothing Else, You Might Find Them Quirky!

What a character

Looking all cushy sucking down a bottle

This is what humidity does to Bronwyn's hair

Aftyn was impressing us with her flexibility. :)

I find lately that I am a woman of few words here on the blog.  Honestly, I'm a little homesick. I miss having a backyard. Aftyn asked me a few weeks back when we were at Home Depot if we could get a backyard. Totally out of the blue. No promptings. Don't worry. I'll pull out of this funk. Just give me a few weeks. And maybe you could loan me YOUR backyard? :)

Joseph Smith Memorial and Other Stuff

This is what our new picture wall looks like. My sister Alyson surprised me with our family pictures that she took for us last year and even had them printed and sent to me for my birthday! I love how colorful they are!!

Us in the foreground, Joseph Smith Memorial in the background

The visitors center on the left

Lovely seats up on the hill. Although when we were there, there were lots of buzzy flies that made it not so fun to sit there. They also had music piped all over the entire place, so whenever you were outside you could hear Motab singing beautifully coming in from the beautiful rolling hills.

In front of the Solomon Mack cellar. I didn't think the camera was going to be able to get the top of our bodies as it was placed on our car. Hence, the crouching picture.

Solomon Mack cellar

Daniel G. Mack cellar

yet another crouching picture! :)

Here's where we kept the girls while driving to and taking pictures at the homesites. Safe from the mosquitoes in the car. While we hurriedly hopped out, plopped the camera with timer set and posed awkwardly. :) That's probably why they have such big smiles, they are laughing at us.