Moving day

Tomorrow morning is moving day, and so instead of going to sleep, I'm up blogging. I don't know why. It really stinks that in Utah, moving 5 miles away means a whole new world for me and my family in relation to the church, which is really all the world we have. Today was our last Sunday. I sang in sacrament meeting and totally started crying, which is so not like me. I'll cry while giving a talk, while teaching a lesson and most definitely when I bear my testimony, but never singing, at least never singing a solo. It was a bit embarrassing. So unprofessional. :) Anyway, in the throws of packing and stuff I kind of forgot that everyone would want to say goodbye to me. It threw me a bit to have people get sad, not because I won't miss them or because I didn't think I wouldn't be missed, but just because I haven't had time to really think about the actual LEAVING part. This week has been full of late night runs to Walmart for free boxes (cereal isle at 11:30pm-12:00am means all the restocking boxes I can fit in my cart, which I had to do 3 freaking times this week), doctors appointments (Evelynn and Eloise had strep and Michael his ear infection), lots of packing, of course, and just generally trying to fit life around three kids and a billion boxes. Seriously, my stuff has quadrupled since we last moved five years ago, and I'm not a big stuff collector! And I cleaned out tons of stuff last year when we thought we were moving to Kansas! That's why we had to make three box runs, because I kept thinking that I collected enough boxes this time, or this time, or this time.... I will not be going again, but my brothers, who have yet to finish packing are going tonight. They started packing this afternoon. I started last Monday. Anyway, moving stinks. I never want to do it again.... or at least for three years. At the moment I have no kitchen table, no bedroom, no food in my fridge, and no more boxes. We're so out of here in the morning! Due to my elevated stress level, I have been stress eating, wherever I could squeeze in a meal that is, and due to my tight schedule I've been exercising much less. I hate to see what this has done to me when I get back on the scale... in like 3 weeks when I've rectified those two problems. Anyway, here's some pictures of my house. In a few days or weeks when I've moved into the new house and gotten settled, I'll post pictures of it. Suffice it to say for now it is much bigger and mmmuuucchhh nicer than our house now. We're having a party in our house in a few weeks too. Come see it, one and all. There's plenty of room. :)

Here's my bedroom. Doug sleeps on the right and is scared of waking up to boxes falling on his head. I keep reassuring him it's safe while adding more boxes on tops.

Living room/hallway to kids room. I've had a few late night accidents trying to get to Michael in the middle of the night navigating through the boxes. No fatalities yet.

Kitchen. I haven't had a kitchen table in a few days. The girls have eaten on their princess table outside and I have eaten standing up. Michael eats in his little corner cave over to the right.

Computer desk area.

I thought this was just cute. We went for a walk Saturday morning since I was rebelling against packing on that beautiful morning and Michael fell asleep in the stroller. This is the picture I snapped of him dreaming. He must have grumpy dreams. :) Another note on Michael, he's gaining weight like he's training for a sumo wrestling match. He's gained over 3 lbs in a month, and he gained a whopping 11 oz in three days just this week between one appointment and the next! He has the HUGEST pot belly and I put him in shorts the other day and his chunky legs stuck out the bottom and I was the happiest mom in the world to see that! Now all we need are tubes in his poor little ears and the world will be a much happier, sleep filled place.

Mother's Day

I had a pretty good Mother's Day this year. Not that my Mother's Days have ever been bad, but this year Evelynn really got on board with the holiday and had set plans for how Mother's Day was supposed to play out. She came into our room before Doug and I were awake and announced "Mom! You need to stay in bed while Dad and I make you breakfast!" Cue me smiling and daddy getting out of bed. :) I did have Michael brought to me because he needed to eat and Doug is not properly equipped for that, but it was fun to hear my blueberry lemon pancakes being made, and they were yummy! I got an enameled cast iron pot for my Mother's Day gift, which I am SO excited about. At church I gave a talk about honoring mothers which I think went over very well. Then I lead the primary kids in singing Mother, I Love You complete with sign language for all the moms. They did a great job. Then I did the regular church stuff in primary and then came home and made rolls while Doug did the mound of dishes in our sink. Then I took a nap snuggled up with my hubby. Oh yeah, it was nice. Then we went to dinner with the Jacobson clan in Draper, where we discovered that Evelynn had a temperature of 102.8, which meant that we then went home and put kids to bed. Other than that hiccup, and the fact that Michael has ANOTHER ear infection, my Mother's Day was pretty good. I love my kids, and I love being a mom. I complain on here sometimes, but it is very rewarding. As I was researching for my talk, I came across a talk by Elder Ballard that really touched me, even though I did not use it in my talk. He said:

First, recognize that the joy of motherhood comes in moments. There will be hard times and frustrating times. But amid the challenges, there are shining moments of joy and satisfaction.

Author Anna Quindlen reminds us not to rush past the fleeting moments. She said: “The biggest mistake I made [as a parent] is the one that most of us make. … I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of [my three children] sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages six, four, and one. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less” (Loud and Clear [2004], 10–11).

I have realized that I need to take more time to enjoy the moment's of motherhood, and not let my agenda or expectation rush me by the simple moments. I have made a commitment to find at least one time a day to enjoy a moment of motherhood, and to show a greater outpouring of love to each of my children than normal, just for a small moment. It's only been 3 days, and I've already reaped benefits.

Happy Mother's Day to all my lovely mother's out there, both the ones related to me and the ones who are not. I love you all so much and I'm so grateful to the influence you have been in my life.

Baseball game

On Saturday we took advantage of the BYU Alumni J-Dawgs tailgate for the senior day of BYU baseball. We've done this for three years, so it's kind of a tradition, but really who would pass up J-Dawgs anyway? Sooo yummy. Cosmo was there, and the kids tried to be brave and say hi to him, but Evelynn barely managed a high five, and Eloise cowered in fright. They had such big talk in the car ride over, saying how Cosmo is their best friend and they wanted to give him hugs and stuff, but we have yet to get them to pose for a picture. Michael on the other hand was fascinated with Cosmo and kept twisting around trying to follow him. Doug thinks it's because of his Cosmo doll that he has in his crib and recognized him from that. :) The kids scored some awesome swag at the tailgate. They got fleece BYU blankets, sun glasses, a drawstring backpack, and squishy baseballs. After all that fun stuff, we went over to the baseball game where Bronco Mendenhall was signing autographs. Doug brought his football, and now it is significantly cooler than before. :)

The game was very nice, if a little bit warm. Not too bad considering we were sitting full on in the sun for about 1 1/2 hours. I haven't soaked up that much Vitamin D in about 6 months! We all slathered on the sunscreen and thankfully avoided sunburn, except for poor Doug who got the tops of his knees burned sitting in the seats in his shorts. Poor guy!

I could not find a hat for Michael anywhere (a major oversight that needs to be rectified by the end of this month so we can frequent seven peaks) so I slathered his bald head in sunscreen, but it was just so bright for him! Doug sacrificed his hat for Michael for a time. He looked pretty stinking cute, if overly tired. :)

The girls did pretty awesome for the first hour, the only mishap being they spilled their shared cup of rootbeer in the first minute or so of me handing it over to them, but in their defense they were trying to share and with all the sunscreen they had on themselves, that cup became pretty darn slick.
Evelynn kept cheering for Jimmer during the game. It's been hard to explain to her that even though Jimmer is the awesomest thing to happen to BYU sports, he does not play in every sport.

Eloise ate chips and pop for lunch, and I was ok with that. As long as I kept her on a steady supply of Doritos she was happy to sit there and slowly turn her hands orange.

We did not stay the whole game, and I don't even know if we won or lost (though we were up by 1 run when we left at the top of the 6th) but all in all the day was totally worth the $16 we paid for our family to attend. We'll see more baseball next year at the alumni day I'm sure. :)

Evelynn the Bike Rider

Here is a video that Doug took of Evleynn riding her bike on day three. She's even better now!

Family Weekend #2

Well, it's not Wednesday, so I must be improving. :) My parents and sister Lori are on their planes home right now, and I must say a lot of things got accomplished while everyone was here, even though I didn't participate in every accomplishment. First off, my brother Jesse graduated from UVU in Information Technology, so way to go Jesse! Lori and Mark technically graduated from BYU and Carl Junction High School respectively in December and have been going on with their lives for a while now, but we threw them a party anyway. We had lots of family and a few of Lori's friends over at our church building Friday evening after graduation for dinner and conversation, and also some good old fashion basketball whooping that was dished out by my amazingly talented hubby. Apparently Jimmer Ferdette is so potent that he can even enhance other peoples basketball skills just by having them watch him play all season. :) Also on the list of accomplishments for this weekend was my parents closing on the house in Orem that we are all going to move into in 2 weeks. I really had nothing to do with that, but I did do a lot of leg work and viewed a lot of houses and freely gave my opinion about this and many other houses viewed this winter in the search of the "right" house. I must say, my dad has a lot of trust in his family because he bought this house site unseen. He saw a few videos and heard a lot of discussion about it, but on Friday he signed the papers in the morning and then that afternoon he went into the house for the first time. I think he's pleased, at least pleased enough with the house to keep it around. Like I mentioned, we're moving into the house sometime the week of May 15th, but I don't have any exact day. My dad is flying back out that week to help and get some more things for the house, which will be very nice for me since Doug leaves for Arizona on Thursday that week for the MPMLA conference for four days. Yeah, good timing, I know. Oh well. Also on the list of accomplishments was getting the house ready and keeping it clean for two showings this weekend. That was a feat. It was nice to have all the extra helping hands, but it was harder to find a "place" for everyone's stuff that they brought. We did a lot of shuffling. Dad and I also got to go running, which I always like to do. He's getting so much faster! I took him on some brutal hills in the snow (yes, it snowed out here, about 2 inches on Saturday) and he did awesome! He says he's going to be able to beat me in a few more years, and with the improvements he's made thus far I believe him. He recently did 10 miles in under a 10 minute mile. That's amazing! Way to go Dad! Also on the list of accomplishments was my Mom turning 50 today. Finally 50! I've kind of been waiting for her to turn 50 for a while now, since she's been a grandma for 5 years already. I mean geez! It's a little unseemly. But now she's legit, even if she doesn't look like it. We had ANOTHER friend of mine comment that my mom looks like she could be my sister more than my mom (this has happened way to many times to be pleasant for anyone except my mom ;) ). I know they're just saying she looks young, but they could also be hinting at the fact that I look old, right? My sister recorded a song mix of all of us singing happy birthday to her and then did an original song for mom's birthday as well with the help of her friend's recording studio. If I figure out how I'll post it to the blog*. It's pretty dang cute. So that's been our weekend. I'd like to say I hope the next few won't be as busy, but I don't think things are going to calm down until sometime in June. If I don't surface till then, know you heard it hear first.

* Here it is!!