Pictures of Our Week with Grandma and Grandpa

Aunt Kamber's cute hat that she found for Aftyn. Aftyn and Bronwyn both loved to wear it!

This moving truck knocked down some wires across the parking lot, which led to some unexpected off-roading for a few of the dwellers of these apartments. My dad had to drive around the building on the grass so as not to knock more of these cables loose from the building.

She should have spent more time doing just this

Look I just fit!

Cheesy grin for the camera

On our way to the splash pad

Aftyn loved getting wet, Bronwyn not so much

Honey pancakes! Yum!!

This is what happens when you don't have a highchair. You get to sit on the pot. Literally! :)

Playing with Grandpa and his scripture case. Notice Aftyn's hefty scriptures on her arm.

They sure do love Grandma!

Folding her arms randomly. Awful cute when she does it!

Running away!

Our Travels

10 days ago, my husband drove my girls and I to New Haven, Connecticut so we could meet up with my sister-in-law and her kids. After the both of us having traffic delays, we managed to arrive within 5 minutes of each other. Miraculous!
The next day, she with her 3 kids and I with my 2 hopped into her van and fled the great state of New York for other states like New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Pennsylvania seemed to take all.day.long to get through! Along the way we made a quick stop at Gettysburg. It was fun to see and we both decided would be fun to repeat without young kids to have the time to see and enjoy everything there.

That night in Columbus,Ohio we arrived at a crazy hour to be carting kids and luggage into a motel room. 11:00 pm. Luckily, 1 child stayed asleep, 2 others laid down quietly and then we were both stuck with our babies. Bronwynnie decided to fight sleep until given a bottle to fill up her empty little tummy, and then she wanted nothing more than to be laid down so she could sleep. Yay for me! Kamber's little one settled down only to wake back up after only half an hour. Poor Kamber. Seemed like she didn't get a whole lot of sleep that night. But must have been enough because the next morning by about 8 we took all the kids off to breakfast and then Kamber and kids swam while my girls and I took baths.
We got back on the road about noon and shortly thereafter met up with my parents around Dayton. Kamber and her kids had another few hours in the car before they reached their destination, but the girls and I had a pretty short drive to Richmond where my parents are serving a mission for our church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  We said our goodbyes and went off to our destinations!
( I just need to mention how awesome Kamber was to do this trip. It was fun to have this adventure and without her coming up with this idea originally, the girls and I would not have been able to have such a fun trip this summer! Thanks Kamber!!!)

Walden Pond: You had me at "my kids will fall asleep on the way home."

Aftyn was feeling a little impatient and wanted to get back out to the water!

 Went to Walden Pond to meet up with my sister in law and 4 of her good friends and all of their kids. 45 minute drive and a lovely lake to play in and we were having a great time! Thanks to the sun for hiding behind clouds so there were no sunburns to worry about.
(Don't worry, I still applied sunblock twice in 3 hours. I don't want to be responsible for horrible sunburns on such young skin.)
Such a fun time and such a fun group of other moms to hang out with.
Thanks Kamber for thinking of us!

Can you say "pooped?"

                                       We may have to repeat this afternoon a few more times!

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!! :)