I've been thinking..

I've been thinking a lot about this stage in life that our family is in. And the conclusion that I keep coming to is that we're extremely blessed. Despite sleepless nights, temper tantrums (not just from the kids), poopy pants (only from the kids :) and a whole list of other things that make day-to-day life hard sometimes, I LOVE my job. I love being a wife and a mother.

Everything up to the point where we got married was a separate life and now I am making a new story. Something that is totally different between my two lives is that I no longer have long spans of time. I live my life in small moments. I think it's partly due to the changing moods of my children. One minute their whole world is falling apart because I chose the wrong cup to pour juice into or because I won't let them eat unidentifiable objects off the floor. So then I become irrationally upset with them! The next minute they are experiencing pure joy because I played a favorite song and picked them up to dance. In return, I also get to experience pure joy because their joy brings me joy. In fact, I tear up almost 20 times a day probably because my heart just can't seem to wrap itself around all the love I feel for my kids and the sweet smiles they give me. So I've learned to take advantage of the small moments. Even if they are really small. This past Sunday Richie sang in the ward choir for the Christmas program. He even sang a solo and brought half of the congregation to tears. However, because he was seated in the stands, I was wrestling two kiddos and I felt like I didn't even hear the songs because I was busy whisper-yelling things like, "Stop putting all the stickers on your face!" However, the congregation got to sing one song with the choir and although I was spitting mad the moment before, as I sang that song I started to cry because the spirit struck me so forcefully. It happened again that evening as I went to turn on the porch light and I caught a glimpse of our nativity set as "Away in a Manger" was playing on the computer. The time to dwell on peaceful moments like that have passed, because right after that sweet experience, someone needed something and I was shaken from my reverie. But, I had that moment, and it was special.


I've also been giving sighs of relief a lot lately because I feel like I really lucked out when I married Richie. Of course you know it's a big decision when you choose that person you're going to spend the rest of eternity with, but I don't think you REALLY understand what you're getting yourself into. It's all talk up to that point, and then after you're hitched you're in it for the long haul and the real work begins. I know of some unfortunate circumstances where the husband wasn't all he was cracked up to be. However I keep finding out that the guy I married was even better than I thought he was! This past Saturday for part of my Christmas, Richie let me go to Idaho Falls and do a little clothes shopping while he took the kids. Best present ever. If it was me, I probably would have put a movie in and called it good, but they went to the duck pond and fed them left over popcorn and played at the park. Then when they got back they painted. He even let Gwen in on the action. :) And then he got them all cleaned up and I came home as they were finishing lunch. These pictures make me so happy.





We decorated a Christmas tree for the birds outside our window so that we can watch neat things going on outside, even if we can't always go outside.


Christmas pictures at our joy school Christmas party today. This first one is dang cute, the other one just makes me laugh our loud. Miles' face cracks me up.

Let the Games Begin

Gwen is now 8 months. Took her to the doctor today and she's making the Garner family proud with the expected 99th percentile for head circumference and 90th for both height and weight.
Some things Gwen has accomplished recently:
*She is a pro army crawler. She is still working on the hands and knees crawling technique. But she's pretty darn fast.
*We're really having to watch what's on the floor now that she has her pincer grasp down pat. She's been putting EVERYTHING in her mouth. I don't remember it being this bad with Miles. All within the past 2 weeks or so she has eaten dog food, choked on leaves and pine needles, almost swallowed a screw and grabbed one of those glass ball ornaments and bit it so hard, shards of it were swimming around in her mouth and cutting it all to bits.
*She can pull herself up on almost anything nowadays and is really enjoying the new perspective. Now that she can do this, our house is always more messy. She pulls all the clothes and blankets out from the changing table (I remember Miles doing that) and a favorite is to pull all the movies out of the box they're in. Now that she's realizing all this mobility, it has made diaper changing and getting clothes on one of my least favorite parts of the day.
*She's cut 3 new teeth! Yowza!
*She'll give you dead fishy kisses if you ask for them and loves to wave hello.
*She's already getting into the groove. She "sings" and "dances" whenever we turn music on or sing and dance around the house.
*I don't know if this is new, but she definitely prefers solid foods to baby foods. Isn't it funny how you can pick up traits of theirs and predict what they will be like when they get older? She's so darn stubborn, but in a very quiet way. If she doesn't want that baby food on the spoon you're shoving in her face, she'll just lift her eyebrows, shut her mouth tight and turn her head away, as if to say, "How dare you." So we've learned that she's more open to eating baby food if you scoop it up on a small piece of bread, or banana, or sweet potato etc. So weird. She's also a very determined little scooter. If she wants something, she goes and gets it.

Anyway, that's Baby Gwen in a nutshell these days. She's one of the most smiley babies I've seen and I LOVE being her mamma!

All dressed up for Church


Snuggling with big brother watching a movie

Using the bouncer as a swing! yikes!



She saw something on the other side of the changing table, so she pulled everything out and army crawled inside.


Cute Girl!