Irish Twins

Today was a full day with a lot of different things going on. One of those things was a little birthday celebration for Joseph and Melodie. Since they were down at school for Mel's bday, it was a cake for both of them to share. An early b-day for Joseph, a little late for Mel. They are my year 2000 Irish twins - Joseph in January and Melodie in December of the same year. 

It's their little claim to fame/"interesting thing about me" fact that they can use when the occasion permits. So that was a fun addition to the day. 

These two pics are Melodie's BeReal capturing the moment - 

We gave Joseph his present early, since they'll be back at school on Monday. Corey got Joseph a bike rack, and we're hoping to not hear about how cheap and unthoughful we are anymore (one year Joseph asked for our old keyboard piano, and I said sure, then asked if that could count as his b-day gift. I recognized there is a lot of room for improvement on my part.). I've been thinking of some other ideas of what we can do for our college kids or missionaries when as they have birthdays. So far I've come up with taking college kids out to eat. Maybe I'll be a new birthday lady and will show up with cake and ice cream like my mom does. I'm not sure I could keep up with doing as many presents as she does. I need simple, just cause I'm dealing with a large number of birthday every year. I shall ponder more. 

So this morning, Natalie and Sophi had a violin workshop with Michael McLean. And I admit that I've been confusing him with the Forgotten Carols Michael McLean, but I'm pretty sure now that it's a different Michael McLean. The guy at the workshop looked much younger than 71, so... I didn't know there would be two that are both musical and composers, but they're not the same guy. When our violin teacher told us that it was Michael McLean that was at the Willow Lake concert playing with the kids, I was confused with myself that I didn't recognize him. So, glad I finally figured that out - two different guys. 

I went over to my parents house for a bit while they were at the workshop, because it was close to my parents house, and I wanted to take some time to help my dad set up an online journal. So that was fun. Took this photo of a photo they had on the wall - my cute family from years ago.

Corey took the kids away today to climb at the Lehi Momentum while I had Abi and Mel here to help me clean, but instead we mostly wasted time. Here's a video Mel made. There were recordings of each of us looking sad, but we chose Abi's cause it was best. Someday, prob after the resurrection, I will be like a Shen Yun dancer and I will be able to flip and bend like all the beautiful dancers in the SharkCookie shorts. I could watch those all day. So we were SUPPOSED to be cleaning up before a small social gathering with some of our high school friends came over at 5, and we started making progress around 4:30. We had a fun visit with our friends and it was fun for our kids to join in the conversation. 

We are NOT the only ones among our friends who has a one year old child! Benji and Suzette have a baby too! ...but today was the baby's birthday, so they actually didn't end up coming. Maybe Katharine  made it happen cause she didn't want to risk sharing her "cutest baby in the house" position with anyone. 

After our friends went home, we went climbing at 9pm - Corey, Ethan, Wes and I. Good stuff. I should go back and look at how many I sent this week. Climbing is fun. This week was a good start to 2023. It's going to be a good year. 

Still Learning

Happy Friday. Katharine sucking her tounge as she slept yesterday. 

So funny and cute. Google just informed me that it's called "flutter sucking". Well, we survived the first week back at school. We were lucky that it was only 4 days (3 days for Abi and Lily) to help ease us into it. I'm kinda struggling though. Winter blues are real. Lack of early sunlight makes it harder to rise in the morning with a spring in my step right. Christmas recovery also makes it hard. It's been great having the older kids home, but things have just been thrown off. Too much skiing and fun = dishes and laundry piling up. It's like everyone thinks they are on vacation or something. ha. Well, we are, but we gotta kick it in gear. Here are my dishes after lunch yesterday. Too many dishes. But before I can attack the dirty dishes, gotta unload the clean. 

I need to minimize and simplify things. Or we need to stop paying tithing so that there WILL be room to receive. Haha, just kidding, but sometimes when I think of Malachi 3:10, I joke the promise that there will not be room enough to receive all the blessings God has for us is a bad thing. I want to have room! I don't like my life to be this overflowing. Got it unloaded, and then my baby was done waiting... she's coming for me. 

Guess I'll load later. Maybe I can have an older kid do it. You know what, that is what I need to do. I need to get the kids to help. They unload sometimes but never load. Ok, I just wrote it out and now it's on the fridge. Sunday through Saturday is Wes/Peter, Abi, Sophi, Me, Lily, Natalie, and Corey/Owen/Daniel on Saturday. We can do this, just one day a week, please children, help us out. Katharine got my leg, then it was game over for me doing chores. I've been able to pass her on to the kids sometimes. Mel has been a great helper. 

I guess we've all been wasting a little bit of time. I've been sending Melodie lots of hair clips on instagram, cause she has such long hair, we might be able to do lots of fun styles on her! So we played hair for a bit today. Mel captured it on her BeReal... 6:20 pm...

I've been thinking and talking with Nicole about this upcoming year, and our goals. It's about ME. And then thinking of Elder Ballard's talk that I shared with the kids about Heavenly Father's goals for us: to Return and Receive, and then I just started listing all sorts of single words that had RE in them that went along with my thoughts recently (after my lesson on Malachi about record keeping and books of rememberance...) We got Record, Remember, REDUCE (minimize and simplify!) REFLECT (I need to/want to coach myself everyday, Reject negative thoughts, Realize and be aware of thoughts that I do want, that serve me, REPENT, Read! Reach up to God, I know he is reaching down to me. Yeah, so these are some of my RE words. 

Me and RE in 2023. For date night, Corey and I went to India House, we talked about how I'm kinda annoyed/tired of waking up the kids every morning. I actually don't mind waking them up, IF they would actually get up, but going back 2-3 times to make sure they are up is stupid. They often say that they don't hear their alarms. So on our way home, we went and picked up 3 of these bad boys - 

Corey was excited. "They give off an 'angry parent' vibe that I like..." ha! We're hoping that helps them get up on their own. And we're hoping to have good consequences if they are late for carpool or miss jazz band and stuff like that. I kinda think that after 20+ years of marriage and raising kids, I should have it all figured out, but I don't. And it's ok. The world changes, so our modus operandi changes too, it's ok that we're still figuring it out. Gotta pray and seek for answers, I know God will help us. I know we need His help.

2022 Blog Books

Blog 2 Print has a 50% off special again, NEWYEARS50, that expires tomorrow, so I spent most of my day doing that. I spent most of the day on Nov 28 making blog books for Christmas, and here I am at it again. It is now 9 pm and I finally got it finished - two books done: "2021-2022" goes from Lasts with Hyrum through Nikki Beach, and "2022" goes from Travel Day through Off to BYU. It kept messing up the beginning post of the second book so it took me a while to finally get it ordered.... I would put the date for Nikki Beach to be the first post, but they'd also add Miami, which kept making me go over my 1150 photo limit, so I had to upload it like 5 times, but it finally worked after I went back into the blog and reverted the Miami Beach post into a draft. I have to keep track of what I reverted to a draft so I can go back after and publish it again. It's a little complicated, but thankfully it's done. I might have been able to fill another blog book, but I didn't think I'd get up to 1150 photos right now since I still have catching up to do with November and December. And January now, since time keeps marching on without waiting for me to catch up! Sheesh. So, yeah, I'm probably going to need to figure out a new way to document or simplify somehow, or I can just keep trying to catch up. I do sometimes catch up all the way, like I've been caught up maybe 5 times over the last 10 years. That's probably accurate, cause Sophi is turning 12 this year, and it was when she was 1 year old, about, when I learned that I could change the publish dates on the blog posts, and that was when I started to fall behind. Before that, I'd be sure I had it done by midnight. 

Ok, so that was most of what I did today. And I just went to add photos from Google photos (and it worked!) so now I remember a few other things I did today. Of course I kissed this sweet little baby girl a lot - 

She is so beautifuuuuul. She is good at playing "put the ball in the circle" and watching it roll down, repeat. 

We are missing the orange BaLL THouGh!! Aaargh, I hate that. I wish it wasn't missing... ugh, I know I didn't get rid of it, so it's just lost somewhere. I'm guessing it was put in the wall connector for the central vacuuming thing that this house has, which we've never used. So it's probably stuck in there somewhere. If I ever see another one of these available at kid 2 kid I'm buying it. Cause they aren't available online anywhere that I've found. I don't care about the hammer, but I want the orange ball back! sniff. 

So something else super cute, along with Katharine's motor control, was when Ethan played a game with her that was SO cute. He'd say "bye" to her as he walked out of the room, then would turn and come back as a monster. 

She'd do her best to flee to safety, but to no avail, cause she can't run. Or walk. But she tried her darndest to crawl!! Or flap away like a little fish, ha! 

Poor little fishy got eaten every time, but she loved it. It was so funny to see her instinct to run combine with her inability to walk! 

I have dreams like this, when I am trying to move but I can't... I wonder if my dad did this to me and this is how they start? The kids were all laughing when I showed them the video, and Melodie used her instagram editing skills to turn it into a cute little horror clip. Her little startle/jump at the beginning - so cute! She is just adorable. We love Katharine so much!!

Snowbird

Corey and the kids went skiing at Snowbird today - Owen, Abi, and Sophi - 

It looks like they were in two or three groups. Girls, big boys, and prob Corey with the little boys. Here is Joseph, Sophi, Mel, and Abi...

And Wes, Ethan, J's friend Ben and Joseph.

Corey with Peter on the magic carpet - 

There was some come and go between the groups. The boys ready to go down some hill that was probably a black diamond and freaky steep and scary. 

Not much more for me to say about it since I wasn't there. I did make them sandwiches this morning. CWALSODP let in Corey's car, then JME and Ben in the van. I got word this morning that the van was stuck. I didn't warn them that the van should not be trusted on a snowy canyon road. He got stuck when he was doing a u turn, then people said "You can't park there!" and he said "I know!" A police officer came and helped him get out - and thankfully didn't give him a ticket for driving a car that didn't have chains or 4 wheel drive. I spent the day with my angel Katharine. Natalie put her down for a nap on the couch. I thought the clip on earrings was a nice touch.

Pretty baby.

I stayed home with Natalie and Katharine. Natalie is still feeling sick, but she finally kept some food down at lunch when I made her a strawberry smoothy with whipped cream topping. After they were home from skiing, Corey took the kids out to eat at there with his Christmas cash from his mom. Natalie was feeling better by then and joined everyone at Chuck A Rama. I fed Katharine in the car while they ate and then we joined them for a visit at the end. 

Cute Katharine!

Corey, that was very nice of you to treat the kids to a buffet dinner. 

It looks like they all enjoyed it!

Jello and slurpees, fries and ice cream sundaes.

After Chuck a Rama, Mel took Natalie and Sophi to watch the Little Mermaid at Hale Theater. And it's back to reality tomorrow. It should have been back to reality today for the elementary kids, but we blew it off since the older kids don't start until tomorrow and we felt the family time was more important. We love moments like this with all the kids - scriptures last night - 

Katharine asleep on Wes yesterday morning at 4:50 am. 

Cute squishy little face. She woke up while I was out clearing the driveway before Wesley had to leave for hockey practice. Thanks Wes, go team. Looks like Katharine should still be in bed. So should I! 

She was feeling fine the rest of the day. Here's a funny video of her eating the phone, haha.  We love family time and loved being with all the kids over the break! The college kids will be here through Saturday, school starts on Monday for them. It's been good.

Church at Brighton

Hello 2023! We are back home after a wonderful day up at Brighton. The kids and I slept over there, We went to church at Brighton. Church was at 8:30, so I got up at 7 and started to rouse the troops. My cute bedmates -

The rest of the kids all camped out in the main room - 

Owen apparently slept in the swing! Funny

Daniel lost his sleeping bag sometime during the night. Wes stole it mid-night when he saw that Daniel wasn't using it.

Church today at Brighton was wonderful. There is so much snow. Our friends said that it has basically snowed non stop for two weeks up here - and granted their cabin is on a hill, but the snow outside was up well past the window!

But worship must prevail! So we all bundled up and headed out for a walk. Little kids got to take a ride in the monster truck, which included me and K.

I loved the messages today. It wasn't fast and testimony meeting, just regular speakers. I took Katharine out to feed her, and didn't find the mothers' room, but I could hear in the primary room so I nursed her in there. I had left my phone in the chapel so I couldn't take notes, but thankfully I was able to take notes with the chalk on the chalkboard there, cause there was good stuff shared. Since it is January 1st, of course a lot of the messages were about Goals and our intentions for the new year. So, from my notes: Church was at 8:30. First speaker was a guy, he quoted Bob Goff, a book called "Love Does: Discovering a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World" (Sounds so good!) "I used to be afraid of failing at something that really mattered to me, but now I'm more afraid of succeeding at things that don't matter." And the quote from above "Make a difference by getting to the DO part of faith. Next speaker was a lady - Jehovah means "He will be what tomorrow demands." She encouraged us to let God Prevail by 1-2) missed those 3) Stop hesitating 4) be true to what YOU have been told (personal revelation!) 5) Raise your standards and lower your expectations. 6) Gather ALL people. God celebrates your efforts. And this was the big thing that she said that I think I need to apply  to my life this year - 

Do not cling to old ways as you step into the new year. 

God - "I know the plans I have for you." Listen to the word of God's prophets. Almost all revelation in scripture that we have is the result of a questions, so ASK QUESTIONS! Pres Nelson in Oct 2020 - Satan blurst he lines between what is true and what is not. God needs peacemakers willing to REASON with others rather than contend. We need to be those peacemakers. All of President Nelsons invitations are basically inviting us to BE BETTER and to LIVE BETTER. 

So those were my notes. The "Do not cling to old ways" made me think of clutter, and things from my past that I'm holding on to - sewing projects, paints, lots of papers full of exercise plans, cleaning systems, other ideas... let them go and start fresh and NOW with the things that God is telling me to do NOW. So church was great, then back to monster van - 

and to the cabin to pack up and try to dig ourselves out of the snow that fell the past 14 hours - it was deep! Of course this is 2 months worth of snow behind me... 

But just from overnight there was so much that Corey's car was buried. 

Lily and her friends cleared off the tops and then we went out to dig around the tires.

Enjoying a few last minutes in the warm cabin - reading and resting. 

A few of the kids wore their pajamas to church. 

The kids stayed in the nice warm cabin while I went out to help in the snow. Katharine enjoying a cookie - 

When the cars were finally free, BeReal went off and Ethan took a pic - 

We successfully backed out the car, were able to open the doors, loaded up belongings, then kids, and then the older kids wanted to go sledding one last time - 

I took their picture as I drove behind them. They made it down and then were going to walk a bit, but instead I kept driving and pulled them behind. 

Ethan took a video and re-did his BeReal. I guess you have to apologize to the BeReal community if you re-do your original BeReal, cause that is not being real! So with an apology he deleted it and it was worth it! Best BeReal of his life - Him, Joseph, Mel, and Wesley all making a train behind the car. 

It was epic. Fun memories. Back in the car, not enough seatbelts for everyone, and not enough room with pillows and sleds etc. The kids were all squished - Lily, Daniel, and Peter got a ride down with the Morgans, Sophi and Owen were squished in the back - Joseph Ethan and Wes were sitting tight next to Katharine's carseat...

Mel in the front, whew! And with that we were on our way and we made it down the canyon safe and sound. 

It's good to be back home. What a fun weekend! Corey and Natalie were well at home - he came home last night with her cause he had to be at church in our ward today and cause Natalie was feeling sick. Corey's BeReal.

We're looking forward to a great and wonderful 2023.