Checking In

The holidays were wonderful.
          I have tons of pictures that I need to post.
                   We made awesome memories, but most of all,
                           I'm just glad we survived  "THE PLAGUE OF 2012" - you heard me!

105 fevers, strep throat, ear infections, throwing up, diarrhea, pink eye, sore throats, coughing, hacking, sneezing, runny noses...and a teething baby on top of it. We truly had a miserable 9 days, and apparently so did the rest of the United States in the worst flu season I've ever heard of in my life...I personally speculate that it affected so many more people than the H1N1 virus that scared us all just a few years ago.  I truly understand now, how children can die from the flu.  Other than that everything has been perfect since my last post.


Each day I look at my kids, or listen to them, and I feel wonder. I wonder who these children really are, and how I got so lucky to be their mom. I wonder where they come up with their hilarious ideas. I wonder what it was like for them in Heaven before they came to me, and I wonder who they'll be when they grow up and leave my home. Several months ago I was sitting in the parking lot of Chick-fil-a, feeding my newborn and older boys. It was kind of a new experience for me to be a nursing mom on the go, but with 3 kids it became a necessity. Venturing out to lunch really was an adventure for us, an EVENT to look forward to, and an experience to rest from when it was done. An employee from the store left her shift and she saw me & my baby and said, "I remember those days."  I replied, "Yeah, they're wonderful and time consuming." And she simply responded, "BEST days."  I've thought a lot about that over these last few months with this new baby, and I'm so grateful for her reminder.  She is so right, I have to remind myself to forget the stressful part of it and to forget the time consuming part of it and just remember that these days are the best days of all.  Truly these days go by too quickly.


Here are some of my favorite moments:

Miles can say "Bababa", and "Dada".
His new pastime is trying to reach for choking hazards and old hardened food particles that no one else knew existed under the fridge. YUCK!

Emmett likes to yell, "I'M THE FIRST ONE TO SEE THE GILBERT TEMPLE" any time we drive past it.  This last week I took him to the temple sight to watch the tractors, cranes, & cement trucks:
Me: Do you know what happens at the temple?
Emmett:  Uh-huh
Me:  You do?  What happens there?
Emmett: THE ANGEL MORONI!!!!!
That was good enough for me.

Tonight I was telling the boys the story of David & Goliath for scripture study and we were reflecting on the lessons we could learn from the story.
Me: Do you know how God helps you?  When you pray to him like David, He helps you with your problems.
Emmett: Like being safe from bad guys.
Me: Yeah, and when we need help, he will tell us what to do by helping us feel good in our hearts and giving us good ideas in our minds of what we should do.
Emmett:  Like a spear.

Before Christmas I couldn't keep up with normal life and all my Christmas projects, so I hired a neighborhood girl to help me pick up & clean my house.  She happened to come over on a day that I was teaching piano students and I told one of my students while she was waiting for her lesson that I would pay her, too, if she helped the other.  Well, these 2 girls were friends and were enjoying each others company as they were working and Tyson didn't think they should be talking so much and he came in and said to me.  "MOM!  They were just talking in there and I told them, 'A little less chit-chatting, and a lot more cleaning!' "  I about died, it was so funny.  I tried to also make sure he realized that this is his house and he's responsible for his messes and that he needed to get in there and help them, but I thought it was so hilarious that he used the expression "chit-chatting."