If You Were Sitting Next To Me On My Couch, What Would I Say?

It has been way too long since I really and truly updated this blog. I had a hard time coming back from Indiana. I missed my parents and coming home to Massachusetts felt good but there were still so many things to miss.
I finally feel like I have my feet back on the ground. From moving here 7 months ago. (Can you believe it has been 7 months? Yeah? Me too.  :) ) Like I know who I am again in this new land that is now my home and I realize how much I like who I am and how happy I am doing the kinds of things I've always enjoyed. I know that may sound immature? young?  Whatever. I had lived only 2 places in my life before this and one of those places I was too young to really remember what that felt like. It's different to move somewhere new, thinking that maybe the person I was back in Idaho wasn't really me and how I could try on some different stuff to see how it fit me. The fundaments of me didn't change. And maybe I needed to figure out what my fundamental characteristics were, for myself. For my family. And I'm feeling much better now.
On to more fun things!  My girls make me laugh so much.
     Aftyn is becoming such an emotional girl! Maybe I just never noticed it as much as I have recently but she can certainly cry a lot especially when she's sick or hasn't had enough sleep or is especially hungry! She astounds me more and more each day with the responsibilities she can handle. It is now her special job to go and get Bronwyn after her nap and tell her "good morning" and get her out of bed. Bronwyn sometimes responds by crying and sometimes she has nothing but smiles for Aftyn. Aftyn likes to be the helper and to do such big girl stuff.  She has also mastered picking up Bronwyn under the arms but Bronwyn is still a little heavy for her to pick up more than a few inches off of the ground. Bronwyn makes me laugh as I have noticed the last few times Aftyn has lifted her, Bronwyn says "up!". I can't tell if she's just giving us a play by play or being bossy. Aftyn has also more and more consistently been eating ALL her dinner! Yay! All the more surprising that more often than not, she is eating things she doesn't really care for but still manages to eat what we've given her. I am so glad to see that her pickyness really is starting to wear off. I think 3 is a fun age for Aftyn. She loves to sit and look at books. She loves to sit and study the pictures and then asks me questions about the pictures or asks me to read it to her. She is getting to know so many things. While we were recently waiting for a VERY long time, she learned the whole rhyme for "one, two buckle my shoe" but once I got to "nine, ten a big fat hen" she INSISTED that hen was actually pen. No matter how many times I tried to tell her that it's hen like a chicken. Oh well. At least she knows that hen and pen rhyme.
         Bronwyn is such a character. One of the games I love that she and Aftyn play is when Aftyn starts laughing maniacally and then Bronwyn just giggles and giggles. I love to hear the two of them just giggling and giggling together. It's so sweet. Bronwyn adores her Aftyn. Bronwyn decided yesterday that it was okay for her to get up and walk around after being put down in her big girl bed. She also began to understand the words "back to bed" rather quickly as well. Whenever I would say them, she would just start to cry and lay there in her bed and cry at me. Poor little thing. It doesn't help that she is starting to get 3 SETS of teeth on the top of her mouth. Yes, that would be 6 teeth. And they all seem to be coming at the same exact time.  Bronwyn goes through periods of time when we think she is doing so good with her words and then for a few weeks where we wonder why she's not talking as much. Today she said these words clearly: milk, yes.  She always repeats what you say to her and sometimes it comes out clearly and other times it is completely garbled. Which is completely and totally normal for this age. But she still astounds us when she does things on her own such as: she nods her head on her own all the time for yes, she walks to the fridge saying her own word for milk, "more more" on her own for food if she wants some and if she wants more of it, she says "bwwb" with her finger in her mouth for when she wants to brush her teeth. Tonight she even stuck out her tongue on command so I could brush it! She likes to have her hair done, especially if Aftyn just had hers done. She plops herself down in my lap immediately after I finish Aftyn whether I've already done her hair or not. She is getting much better at not pulling bows out of her hair now that I've been putting them in more often. She knows where her diaper is and when we occasionally put Aftyn's panties on her over her diaper and then we ask her where her panties are, she pats them with a big grin on her face! Oh my goodness she is so funny!  The best parts of when we laugh at Bronwyn is when Aftyn is laughing too because she thinks she is so funny.

I love my kids. They make my life happy. As does my sweet, hardworking and loving husband.

Reed is gearing up for school in about 2 weeks. I feel much more prepared for this semester since this time I know what to expect from him and from myself and how to deal with all of that. The girls and I are trying to plan a full and fun weekly schedule so that we're not stuck with nothing to do as often as we did last semester. That's what makes life hard for the kids and me is when we have nothing fun to look forward to, especially since that fun thing normally would be daddy. So hopefully that means more regular postings with pictures of all our fun excursions! And I am also planning on getting new pictures on here and hopefully a few videos of my girls because they are growing up too fast and too much of it is going undocumented!

Why My Heart Broke a Little Today

You can call me crazy, I'm okay with that. 
Today we bought a bunkbed off of craigslist for Aftyn and Bronwyn.
 In an apartment as small as ours, something like a bunkbed that saves space is exactly what I am looking for!
And it's time to start Bronwyn thinking of herself as a big girl since we have big plans in a few months that will solidify those feelings in her.  That being said, it's still hard to see my little little Bronwyn doing something that feels like it's for big girls.

Tonight after they were both sound asleep. No sheets yet. Don't judge. They'll get them soon. Maybe even tomorrow! :)

Aftyn has been so excited ALL. DAY. to sleep in her big bunk bed!

This was Bronwyn at naptime today. This is what broke my heart a little, to see her little body laying on such a big mattress. I just wanted to climb in next to her and snuggle her. By the way, we figured it was safer this way to have her mattress on the floor with the bed slats acting as her safety rail to keep her from rolling out. So far, seems to work well!

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. **