Letter to My Daughter

Abigail,

As I think about the words I want to write to you I tear up a little.  You are our joy and our love.  I relish watching you as you pull yourself up on something bouncing your short little legs your face showing all the joy in the world.  Your voice brings a smile to my face when I hear it squealing in joy at your brother or yelling (at your reflection in the oven glass) or whispering at me when you get done nursing.  You always smile the biggest grin wit hone little dimple when your dad or I walk into a room, and it lights up our day. 

Your favorite thing to do right now is play in the dog water.  You have started eating solid foods and act like the world is going to end if there isn't food on your tray while you are sitting in the high chair.  You will eat anything we give to and eat until we stop giving it to you! 

Abigail, I wish so many things for you as you grow in this world.  I wish you to be honest, kind, loving, Godly, and discerning.  I hope to raise you to be strong and confident but full of grace.  The world that you will grow up in already seems so different from the one that I did. And it doesn't seem like it was that long ago that I was growing up!  I fear that you will fall trap to the world instead of striving to live above it and all that goes on, holding your own morals and faith regardless of those around you. 

I can't wait to watch you grow into a woman and I know while we won't always see eye to eye I hope we can always be respectful of each other and stay close.

Love Forever and Always,


Mamma

Baby Shoes

I swing from being totally over it to really fed up about the house never being clean and there being stuff everywhere. 

Then I see the baby shoe under the table that was kicked off by Abigail who is constantly on the move and crawls from one end of the house to the other squealing with delight when she catches up to someone in a room. 

Then there are the blocks that are tucked into the pile of dirty cloths on my floor because Garrett is constantly wrapping his toys in clothes as he plays Santa.  He lives for you to spend ten minutes "sleeping" while he eats the cookies and delivers your presents.

I walk by the baby shoe and remember that there is such a short time when those itty bitty shoes will be under my table and I decide to leave it a little longer, and smile every time I walk by it.

Favorite Part of the Day

My favorite part of the day is the end of the day.  When the kids are all washed, pajamas on, and teeth and hair brushed.  They are so clean and smell so good.  All they want is a book and bedtime snuggles.  They smell like soap and there tired little eyes are hanging low.  I love reading to them watching them get in grossed into a book their eyes lighting up and a plot changes or something funny happens, or Garrett who gets excited and has a million questions about what is going on, and you can't possibly continue reading until they are all answered.

My other favorite part of bedtime, feeding and rocking Abigail to sleep.  The other kids are sometimes still crazy at this point and it is my time of the night to unwind and sit down for the first time, sometimes for the day.  Her room is dark with the noise maker going and the night light on it just barely illuminating her little features.  She grunts and swallows as she runs her hands up and down my chest and runs her little fingers through my hair.  Sometimes she even reaches up to feel my face as she settles in and gets sleepy. 

Of course then there are the nights when bedtime is the worst part of the day. When it is the last straw for everybody, no one listens, everyone is tired and crying and Abigail is screaming because she woke up for the third time when I put her in her crib.  But that's okay, I'd rather just remember the good nights!

Giving Thanks

I find myself counting my blessings a lot these days.  I have two beautiful children and a loving niece. Then their is that wonderful husband that supports me in everything and is my rock.  We live in a beautiful place, have a wonderful home and so much support and love.

This Thanksgiving was spent with great friends of ours that live in Kalispell.  They we such wonderful hosts and brave to take on our family of five!  There little girl Grace is 14 months and is such a joy!  The weekend was spent laughing, loving on the kids, eating, and drinking.  The perfect Thanksgiving weekend.

Jen got a new camera so we got lucky and got a ton of great pictures of the weekend while she was playing around.

 Many faces of Addison

Many faces of Garrett

Jake works for the Kalispell Fire Department so we went and visited him while he was on shift.  The kids had a blast running around the huge engine bay and getting in and out of the trucks.

Being mobbed by the kids in the morning.

Banished to the kids table

Grace eyeballing Addison's ice cream

All of us at the Thanksgiving table

Playing with the kids in the basement

Marriage

This quote came from a series that one of my favorite blogs is doing called "Less is More".  In the particular post that this appears in Eddie is talking about More Intimacy.

With all the chaos going on in our lives these days Brian and I sometimes feel like ships passing in the wind.  Now that he isn't in paramedic school we do have more time at home together but it still seems like it is the rarity instead of the norm. 

I truly believe that the strength of a family is dependent on the healthiness of the relationship between spouses.  The stronger and deeper rooted the relationship between husband and wife the stronger and healthier the family is. 

One of the keys to a secure marriage is intimacy.  I am not just talking about intimacy in the bedroom but intimacy throughout the day.  I am talking about the moments in the kitchen when you kiss as you are preparing dinner or doing the dishes, the little whispers in the hallway while moving kids from bath to bed, texts saying that you are thinking about your spouse.

I am lucky in that Brian is so good at all the little moments.  It pushes me to respond back in the same manner, when I am apt to run in the other direction with ten things on my mind.  The moods of our house definitely revolve around the mood of our relationship.  When we take the time to be loving with each other, I have noticed we are often more relaxed and loving with the kids.  When we go into stressful survival mode and don't take the time to check into each other the kids feed off of that. We are more likely to be sharp with them and they in turn are less likely to obey.  

Multipling Children

Brian and I were walking across the street the other day, he is carrying Abigail in her car seat and I am herding Garrett and Addison across the street.  We run into old friends of ours that we hadn't seen since last Christmas, and I think the jest was something like "man, you guys have been busy procreating!" While we didn't procreate Addison, we definitely have been busy multiplying children!

Adding two kids in four months to our family has sent us wheeling in a lot of ways.  We also feel so blessed in many ways as well!  We feel lucky that we have the means to provide a safe, healthy, and loving environment for Addison. Garrett and her are getting along so well, love playing together and our family has molded around her.  She seems to have thrived in the structured environment in our home constantly asking questions, wanting to help cook dinner, and constantly wanting to have an interaction and connection.

Things have also been hard, Abigail and even Garrett are sometimes up multiple times a night. There are fights between the older two, tears about things not being fair, and Addison (understandably so) can be over emotional.  It is a fine balance to keep everyone feed, happy, disciplined and well rested.  One that is exhausting and almost never obtainable.  But it does make those moments when I am making dinner, Abigail is napping, Addison is coloring at the kitchen counter talking with me and Garrett is playing quietly with his trains very sweet and rewarding.

The other thing I have noticed about multiplying children, even with a 5 year old and a 3 year old, someone is always hungry.  I cannot keep enough food in the house!  This is especially true with Addison.  She can eat two bowls of oatmeal for breakfast, oatmeal that has fried apples and raisins in it and then tell me 20 minutes later, while she is in line at school that she is hungry. We are constantly going through snacks, and then telling them they have to wait for lunch, dinner, etc. to eat again.

Then there is the laundry...I am learning that if I don't just take a day and do it, including folding and putting away, we are constantly doing laundry. All. Week. Long.  Digging through piles on our bed, and moving piles from our bed to the bench back to the bed, back to the bench, back to the bed, which is even more annoying than just pushing myself to do it all in one day.  And we basically end up doing laundry all week anyway between accidents at night, spills during the day and Garrett's bloody noses!  Aggghh, and re-reading that paragraph just made me exhausted...

I am constantly telling myself to let go of the things like the laundry, dirty bathrooms, and dog hair everywhere and just enjoy the kids.  To give them what they really need which is my time and attention.  They are only young once and the bathrooms can wait.  The laundry will just get dirty again and pile up in a corner. 

I try to make myself sit with Abigail drinking in the smell of her neck soaked with baby drool and spit-up, that smell that makes my heart skip a beat just thinking about it.  To make her giggle and soak in that toothless grin, that is now blemished with one little tooth. 

To tune into Garrett's constant chatter as he and I are painting his Halloween costume and he is so into what he is trying to tell me that he has been talking for the last 20 minutes and completely stopped painting. 

To let Addison help me with dinner, pulling up a stool and wanting to help measure, see the noodles boil and to just be next to me with my undivided attention for 10 minutes.  Her face lighting up when I tickle her or tease her. 

We have been busy and the adjustments have been hard at times but the blessings that we see and the richness and joy of the kids makes it all worth the crazy! 

This is my prayer for my children, for God to lead us to raise children that want to be at home.

Trying This Blogging Thing Again

I have been thinking about returning to blogging ever since I stopped working full time last April.  I miss this little place and want to have a place to write down ideas and record the crazies of our household.  I have crafty schemes, daily frustrations, and crazy children to share.  I will have to start taking more pictures and making myself sit down once in awhile and write.  I have spent quite a bit of time redesigning the blog and reading old post.  Goodness I am a dork! But there are a lot of awesome things posted on here too!  I can't wait to see what happens in this special little place.

Love

Love is not something you say, it's something you do.
You can fake that you care but you can't fake being there.
To send a message of love to your children you must show up.
Love is not a spectator sport.
Our kids need to have love expressed to them daily.
With the little ones its pretty simple.
We need to hug them often.
We need to get down on the floor with them and play with toys.
We need to sit down and read with them on a regular basis.
We need to go in and lie down with them occasionally at naptime.
We must not allow ourselves to be too busy to spend time with them-lots of it.

I need to live by this more often...

Fall

Okay, well one day of Fall!

Brian was gone at a class on Saturday and Sunday so it was just Garrett and I all day. I loved having some one-on-one time with my little guy. We went to the What Women Want Expo on Saturday morning with some good friends. The girls looked at vendors and got free goodies. The boys hung out in the strollers and checked out the scenery. One of the vendors had alpacas and a huge "sheep" dog. The boys sure did like that. In the afternoon I had to run into work so Garrett got to come with me.

This morning Garrett was driving me up a wall and into everything (imagine breaking my hairspray, pulling all of the parchment paper out of the box, taking off with the end of the toilet paper through the bathroom...) Brian's mom sent me a quote saying "s two-year-old is kind of like having a blender, but you don't have the top for it." That was our morning, So I loaded him in the car and we went in search of amusement.
Here are the pictures of our day:

Trains at Barnes and Noble. I am guessing a set will be in out future.

After Barnes and Noble we went to the toy store to find a gift. I made a totally rookie parenting move and left Garrett out of the stroller to play with all the interactive displays. He went bananas, pulling toys off the shelf and going "what's that?!?!?!" and "ohhhh!!!". Needless to say I had to pull him out of the toy store screaming and put him back in the stroller. We did make it back in to actually purchase a gift, but he cried off and on through the whole thing. I partly blame that it was lunch time and he was hungry...right??

Playing at the park on the way to get the mail after lunch and nap.


Brian came home early so we had a yummy dinner and then decided to do pumpkins:

Getting started on pumpkins

Scooping out the pumpkins with Dad

Helping Mom with the drill

And Dad with the knife! (Obviously, we are very safe and responsible parents. We let our kid that close to a big knife AND use the drill in one night! What you don't see is right before this when Garrett tried to crawl in Brian's lap while Brian held onto the 6 inch blade...)

And, the ongoing battle of trying to get a toddler to sit and look at the camera for a picture. Oh, and our pretty pumpkins!

Garrett is such a fun and frustrating toddler. He can point out most of the basic body parts and knows some animal sounds. He is ALWAYS asking "what's that" and saying a lot of things that I don't understand (which is frustrating for him.) He understand enough to know what we are asking him to do but rarely obeys without follow through (frustrating for us!) He has taken to yelling "NOOO!!" back at you when you ask him not to do something (and sometimes running away.) We are enjoying his new communication skills but trying to navigate what to write off as the "stage" and not give attention to, and what things to not let slide. I feel like it is a fine line between teaching manners/acceptable behavior and overreacting/micro-managing...I guess only time will tell!

Home Sick

I am home with a sweet sick baby. He woke up at 8:00, had a banana and glass of juice on the couch, watched some sesame street, snuggled up with me and passed back out at 9:15. He is still asleep on the couch. Poor kid.

Brian is coming home at 12:30 to switch with me. Why do I do this? Of course all I want to do is stay home and take care of Garrett. Why couldn't I just tell work that he was sick and I would be gone all day? I guess I feel bad making others cover for me all day.

Ring Around the Rosie

Please don't make fun of my annoying voice, or my fingers flying in front of the camera!

I love watching those little feet turn in circles! I do not think that the fall at the end was on purpose, we are still working on that part.

He makes my heart go pitter-patter!

There Are No Words

to describe the state of my house, so I will show you pictures. Because who wouldn't want to see pictures of a house that has exploded from me working 50 hours last week and us taking off on a camping trip, and coming home so exhausted I don't even care!




As you might notice the dishes are done. Brian, he is amazing.





Notice the can of tomatoes on the coffee table? Garrett always gets into the lazy susan. It had snacks in it which was a mess when he was in there, so we switched the cans and the snacks. I don't have raisins and crackers dumped all over the floor but now I have cans of tomatoes in the livingroom...

Walking!

Garrett has been so close to walking for so long. Tonight I was holding on to the back of his shirt while he was walking toward Brian to give dad0 a rock. I let go of his shirt and he took about 20 steps right to Brian without even blinking or stumbling and falling. I cried! I was so proud of him for actually doing it and sad that we just passed a major milestone and can never go back. I was also relieved, of course in the back of my mind I was afraid something was wrong with him! We continued to play the same "game" and he walked every time. Like he had been doing it forever!

I Am Going to be That Crazy Lady!

I don't know what it is but ever since I have had a baby I have fallen absolutely in love with ALL babies. The little boy that is trying to wiggle out of his grandma's arms, the little girl facing outward in the Bjorn with so many rolls on her little arms you just want to squeeze her, and the little girl in her stroller sucking on her paci and looking up at you... All of them are utterly irresistible!

I have always like babies and kids, but now that I have my own, I am even more in love with them. And I think that is it. Having a baby has taught me how wonderful and special every child is. Now every time I see one I just want to love on them like every wonderful child deserves to be loved on. They are such a bag of mysteries, so perfect, curious and new.

I know that at some point we will have another one and I can't wait to have a squishy little baby to love on (not that the one I have isn't sufficient enough for now.) But what happens when I have no more squishy wonderful babies to love on? I already look at everyone else's babies like I want to eat them up, what will happen when I know that we are done...I will be that crazy lady who won't leave other people's children alone. Just warning you.

The Smell of Smoke Takes Me Back...

The end of August has come around, which in Montana means hot days and windy afternoons. The hot days and windy afternoons kick up smoke from the forest fires and cover the mountains in a blanket of haze. Right now Brian and I are sitting in bed and the house is full of the smell of smoke from fires 200 miles away.

Brian and I really started hanging out in late August, he was fighting fires in Paradise Valley and I was working in a boutique and saddle shop in Gardiner. He would come wandering in after a long day of work with a coffee from the coffee shop next door, just to say "hi" since he was in the area. He later admitted that the coffee shop was a cover for seeing me (cause that wasn't obvious!) And he would be in his uniform from the day, a Gallatin National Forest tee shirt, that was bleached out from sweat and hard work, and those green Nomex pants...Oh man did those pants look good on him! (I still tell him he should have kept a pair, you know, to keep a girl happy!) Anyway... as the summer wore to an end the fires in Paradise Valley got worse. He always found an excuse to come back to Gardiner for the night. Those were the days when we would stay up till 2 and get up to go to work at 6. How we did that I still don't know!

To this day I see the hazy mountains and smell the smoke and all I can think about is that first summer and the way that Brian and I couldn't get enough of each other. I love you baby, and can't wait for years of smelling the August smoke and thinking of those first years, you know, before the house and baby that popped our beautiful little bubble!

Baby Food: A Journey

I decided early on that I would try making my own baby food and just see how it goes. I wasn't totally hard core, I didn't make my own baby cereal and teething biscuits and all that fun stuff.

What I liked:

• Being able to completely control the texture and ingredients of the food I was feeding Garrett.
• Being able to do everything in bulk and having a large selection of things to choose from.

What was hard:

• The time it took to make enough food to have a good selection and enough for us and daycare. Between cooking, pureeing, freezing and storing sometimes it would take a total of three days to get everything completely finished, and that was if I stayed on top of it.
• The planning and time it took to make sure that we had a good selection, so that Garrett wasn't eating the same things.
• Traveling. It is hard to take frozen baby food on a longer trip... You either waste it because it is defrosted but not eaten or have to count on having a microwave to warm it up.

I will definitely make baby food again hands down. Being able to control the consistency and ingredients was well worth it. A couple of things that I learned was that if something isn't pureeing very well add lots of extra liquid. We had a small food processor and a big one. Honestly, I thought that both were necessary. The big one I used in the beginning when I was making bulk of a lot of different things. The small one we used A LOT for the in between stage when he could eat what we were eating but it had to be pureed. I often put a whole meal in the thing and whipped her right up. Now he is eating mostly table food and I hardly puree anything. I still freeze stuff though, so that he has a meal when we are eating something that he can't really have, like steak.

I would freeze lentils and cous cous for a starch, and then freeze ground pureed turkey, steak and pork and lots of veggies. For a meal I would pull out a cube of each and mix them together, that way we could mix up flavors so he didn't get the same thing all the time.

It has been hard trying to find something to feed him while we are dieting. Yesterday evening I actually took the time to cook him a spinach and butternut squash lasagna. SO GOOD...and he seemed to like it. I cut the 9x9 lasagna into 16 pieces and now they are in the freezer. Hopefully that will help with the "I don't have anything to feed him that is halfway healthy and not processed" 5:30 panic. I think the challenge now is find a variety of "big boy" foods that are easy to prepare/throw together and aren't supper processed.

Depirvation Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

So, Brian and I are trying to knock off a couple of pounds. For me I am a little heavier than I was before I had Garrett, and I was heavy for me when I got pregnant. I want to loose 15-20 lbs and get down where I fit into my OLD clothes, and feel good about myself. And before I have another baby I want to be at a weight that I am comfortable with (not that we are close to having another baby or anything, don't get all excited or nothing!)

We started on Monday and so far it has been going really good (besides the coffee I got on the way home, because you know what, I made it all week without cheating AND had a really busy week at work, AND I deserved it!). We have started to diet a couple of times in the past year and not even made it a couple of days. But this time, I am not messing around. I just want to do it and be done with it. I am also working out to try and tone a little bit too. Mama's legs are in a very sad state right now! And I figure the weight loss will only benefit from the working out, right?

So, I have not had much cooking inspiration in the last two months. We have been gone a lot of weekends and there is to much going on to sit on the computer and spend time looking at cooking blogs and dreaming of yummy things to challenge myself with. Now that we are dieting...all I wanna do is make casseroles and pastries and yummy grilled goodness and try new cocktails and freeze ice cream and try making homemade pasta and...well you get the point. I guess I will have to store all the inspiration up for when we get done, cause none of the above is on the diet!

Where Have I Been?

I have had a lot of people lately asking why I am not blogging anymore, and such. Thanks for all the questions, it makes me feel like people ACTUALLY read this!

I have been wondering why I stopped blogging as well. I think that I ran out of inspiration. I used to spend quite a bit of time, esp. at work, online reading other blogs and finding things to talk about.

I feel like my life has narrowed into Family and Work. I am having a hard enough time managing both of those and feel like I don't have anything creative left to give.

I also think that a lot of the time I want to use this blog as a work release, but I can't because there are people that I work with that read this blog. Which is fine but it limits the work talk, since I want to avoid putting myself in a bad situation. There are people though who blog and don't talk about work at all. If they can do it I can do it!

So I am not promising that I am going to be going crazy or anything but I do think I will be trying to blog more, cause, well, I miss it!

Two Great Weekends!

This weekend was Mother's Day and last weekend two weekends ago was Easter! Both were great weekends and here are some pics to prove it!

Easter weekend started out with swimming lessons:




And then a hair cut:


Before



During



After!

And helping dad lower the crib ALL the way:


hmm...this doesn't look quite right...!! (hehe!)



And Easter, of course!!


I didn't get any outside pictures. Sadly, it was too cold!

And last but not least, Mother's Day!


Waiting for lunch at Mark's In-n -Out on Saturday and brunch at Chico with Grandma!



Being Daddy's big helper again by helping to install cabinet locks, because someone FINALLY figured out how to get those cabinet's open.