I heart valentines day

We had a fun day yesterday. In the morning I dragged the kids to the gym. I had to go knowing how much candy I was going to consume. While Levi took a nap, me and the girls made some valentine cookies. When Levi woke up, I took the kids to see Gnomeo and Juliet. For dinner we all made our own personal pizzas and tied in an FHE objective lesson w/ making pizza. During this fun day, I couldn't but think how much I love my job. I love being a stay at home mom. I don't get compensated w/ money but the benefits I have as a mom are priceless: kisses and hugs galore, cuddle time, hearing them say funny things, wearing whatever I want (the more comfortable the better), no boss, no time schedule, an occasional nap, teaching them things and getting to see when they "get" it, reading, puzzles, parks, play dates, and so much more. I love Jeff, I love my kids, and I love that I know that we are a forever family.

11 months

It's a few days late, but I wanted to write since Levi recently celebrated 11 months. It's unbelievable how quickly time goes by and how much he has learned and grown each and every month. Last month 3 teeth came through on top. Instead of taking a few steps and falling, Levi walks around like he's been doing it his whole life :) Crawling is a thing of the past, which I prefer. Crawling meant picking up every crumb on the floor and putting it in his mouth, since walking, that has stopped. Levi's hair is growing. It is getting pretty long. I see a first haircut coming up in a few months. His hair is blonde and curly. At this age, his hair is more curly than Sydney's or Jordyn's was. His first word was "mama." I would say that it's still the only coherent word. He is becoming quite the chatter box: squealing, rolling his "r" sound, anything audible goes. He is easy to put to bed and happy when he's awake. Two things he absolutely loves: bath time and swinging in the basement. This past month he has started eating human food and has nearly stopped eating all baby food. We love having him in our family....I can't say it enough.

Celebrating Valentines

I feel like this is the year (and the end of last year) of starting new traditions now that I have 2 kids that fully understand what's going on with each holiday and appreciate the fun little things we do. Valentines has provided yet another set of traditions. I wasn't sure what to do so in full Lauren fashion I stalked other creative blogs to copy other people's great ideas and add my own twist. I got these mail boxes at Michaels and added vinyl to personalize it. Every night I write something that I love about each child and put in a Hershey's kiss as well. When the flag is up, the girls know they have love mail. The first night, made it all worth it. The screaming, running down the stairs, and jumping up and down, not to mention the look in their eyes when they opened up their mail box was utterly satisfying for me. It's times like this where their reaction really makes my extra effort to make them feel special worth it. Every night since they pretty much have the same reaction. It's my favorite time of day, and theirs too. We'll continue this daily until Valentine's day. Here's the mail boxes, excuse me...Love boxes w/ love mail.
Up close view.
With their kiss and love mail.

For FHE, we made a love chain, counting down until Valentine's Day. Every morning we take off a piece of the love chain and perform the task on the paper. The tasks are all love/kind acts: Helping w/ the dishes, giving a compliment, making someone else's bed, etc.

Warm Fuzzies

Most parents would agree that trial and error is a part of day to day life. I recently saw a quote that goes along with this, "You may never make a discovery if you're afraid to make mistake." I've made my fair of mistakes (and my kids are only 5,3, and 1. YIKES). I made a new discovery that's been awesome for now, so we're sticking with it. We've been doing this for a few months now. I copied this from a friend, so it's not an original thought. So I call it Warm Fuzzies. My kids get a fuzzy when they give me or someone else a warm-fuzzy feeling inside them. This can be accomplished by sharing kindly, giving a genuine compliment, helping around the house w/o complaining or doing something w/o being asked to (I saw Jordyn throw trash away she saw on the ground w/o being asked and she didn't know I saw...so she got a fuzzy), helping a sibling that's needing something, etc. When the jar is full, they get a date with Jeff. Next time it's me and back and forth. Jeff took Sydney to get a pedi/mani. It was her first time. She loved it, what girl wouldn't right? Jeff just watched, he didn't join her. One time Jordyn wanted to make cupcakes together so we did that. It's been fun to see what the girls come up with on things they want to do. I think this will be sticking around our house for awhile :)
Love the purple and green she picked out.
Jordyn insisted on blue frosting on your cupcakes.

Sarah's baptism

For the past year and a half Jeff has been our Ward Missionary. Up until recently (when we got sister missionaries) we had no baptisms in our ward since we had been in the ward. Since November, or maybe December, we've had 6 or 7 baptisms. The sister missionaries are AWESOME and have been working so hard, it's been inspiring. Jeff works closely with them and so he has had great experiences teaching and meeting people. This past Saturday he baptized Sara and the next day blessed her with the precious gift of the Holy Ghost. He hasn't baptized anyone since his mission which was 10 years ago. This experience was also a memorable one as well.
Jeff's words now:
This was such a special occasion for me. I conducted the service wearing my white baptismal clothes. I took the occasion to share some of my thoughts at the outset of the meeting. I felt impressed to share with Sarah that there was a greater purpose for her coming to Alaska. She came here to help her cousin but clearly the Lord had a bigger purpose. It reminded me of how Katherine came to Alaska to be a nanny but ended up getting married. It appears that Alaska is a place that the Lord sends people to find greater purpose in life. The best part of the baptismal service was that I had the same type of spiritual experience that I had frequently on mission. I realized how much I miss those moments- moments when life makes so much sense and joy abounds. After the ordinance was performed, I had a moment of panic when I realized that I forgot to bring an extra white shirt. It was quick an embarrassing moment to stand up to conduct the rest of the service wearing a t-shirt under my suit jacket. At least I had a t-shirt and it wasn't my g's though. The mission president was in attendance and he found it quite funny which made me feel better. I will always remember the chance to baptize and confirm Sarah Smith. I am so grateful that she asked me to baptize her and that the Lord blessed us to have a great experience at both the baptismal service and confirmation the next day at church.

Rainbows

This is what happens when you're feelin' a little funky, go a little crazy with food dye, and all the kids are playing together nicely so you have a few extra minutes.....you make some rainbow pancakes. The brown pancake is actually purple.

This past week

Another busy week has come and gone. I'm looking forward to Jeff having Monday off. Mondays off are the BEST. It makes Sunday night exciting, not like we're doing much, but knowing we have Monday to sleep in, spend together, and do whatever we want like it's a Saturday is exciting, at least for us anyway.
This past week was pretty fun for us. Sydney has been talking about taking violin lessons for about a year now. I've been waiting to put her in lessons to gauge how much she really wanted to learn. Well like I mentioned, it's been about a year since she first brought it up, and she mentions about playing on a regular basis. I had mention piano lessons, since we have one, but she has no desire. Our neighbor girls got locked out of their house and came over. The oldest has a viola and Sydney begged to play with it. She didn't sound like a natural, but she sure looked beautiful holding it like she knew what she was doing. I'm planning on starting her in lessons after summer.
Another thing the girls started this week was gymnastics. The gym is awesome, a little bit of a drive though. The girls go to different classes but they're at the same time so I kill 2 birds w/ 1 stone. It makes the drive not so bad. Sydney and Jordyn loved it as you can imagine my little monkeys would. Every day since sydney has been asking, "Is gymnastics today?" Both of their teachers commented how strong each girl is.

Last night we went to the UAA boys hockey team game. A friend gave us tickets and we met up with Jeff's coworkers. The girls enjoy going because they get to play with their friend's, stay up late, and cheer for the SEAWOLVES. Here's a picture of us before we left our house.

Here's a picture of Jeff after x-country skiing when it was -11. He thought his contacts were freezing to his eyeballs so maybe that's why his eyes look blood shot. I know you're probably thinking he looks miserably cold, which he probably was, but he loves going skiing.

10 monther

Yesterday Levi turned 10 months. On this wonderful day, he woke up at 5am, for some unknown reason, and was ready for his first nap by 7:35am (he slept 3 hours). I was jealous. My eyes were hurting and I was wanting more sleep. This past month has been pretty monumental. He got another bottom tooth, learned to crawl backwards downstairs, and has taken his first steps. His hair is getting longer and it's growing out curly. It's so cute. When he wakes up from sleeping, the curly hair has turned into nappy, sleepy head. He has followed in his sisters footsteps....early walker, curly blonde hair, and I'm sure he'll be an active, curious toddler as well with lots to say. He is pure delight to have in our home. We cherish the small amount of time we have w/ Levi alone when the girls are in bed. I think he loves it too. I love his smile, cheeks, thighs, giggles, toes, and just about everything still. The girls love him to pieces. They continue to nurture and adore their little brother. The girls have picked up on mine and Jeff's reaction when Levi has little falls, they cheer for him. I'm already thinking about what to do for his 1 year birthday, which is just not right. It's gone by SOOO fast this time around. It's much harder getting him to sit still and take a picture.

The famous 'I want more food' face. There's a loud sniffing noise that goes along with the face. The face never gets old, it cracks us up every time.
Nice curly hair. I can officially say that ALL of us have some rockin', crazy, nappy, curly locks.
Checking things out.

Using my camera

Still getting used to my camera. I loved that they had a DVD instructional guide to using the camera. There is so much to learn and I easily get frustrated when pictures turn out blurry because I'm not on the right setting or something else. But here are some amateur yet focused pictures of the people I like taking pictures of.The one of Levi is my favorite one that I've taken.

X-mas and NYE

It's been awhile (for me) to post anything because our computer couldn't fit anymore memory and we had to get an external drive to move things to (mostly our movies I make that take up so much space). It's pretty much over my head, like most computer things, but with the help of a friend, he was able to help out and we've added more space...so there's that mindless story.
CHRISTMAS: I think this was our first Christmas with just us and our kids. Kinda sad, but nice to just focus on each other and the true meaning of christmas. We added lots of traditions this year since we weren't traveling to the lower 48. This is what we did for the month: gingerbread houses, making cookies for Santa, seeing Santa and his reindeer, service (polar plunge) and helping out a family, singing, acting out the nativity, scripture advent calendar (copied from the Friend), reading Luke 2, Christmas pjs (we do it the 1st of Dec.), Christmas puzzle we do together, Christmas day we do presents and after we watch the movies I made for each child. This year we watched it on our wall using Jeff's projector, and our turned our blog turned into a book. Christmas Eve night Jeff gave me my present, a nice legit camera. He thought I should open it so I could use it the next morning. The only problem with that, I still didn't know what I was doing. The next day when the girls were running down the stairs, I didn't even get their faces. The girls got razor scooters and some other girly dolls and such. The ultimate novelty present was a whoopie cushion (Luisa, it's gonna happen at sometime. We'll buy one for Jacob in a few years). We give the kids a dollar to buy one another a present. Jordyn bought Sydney the Whoopie Cushion. She didn't know what it was at the time, but it's still getting plenty of use. We had a great day and month for that matter.
NEW YEARS EVE: We missed going to Jeff's grandma's house for her NYE party. But we incorporated one of her traditions...banging pots and pans outside right after you count down. We did this New York time (8pm AK time). The girls loved it and then we watched the fireworks going off in the city. So although we were sad to be away from family we did manage to make the best of it.Levi getting in on the action.
We went outside and then the girls filled their pots with snow.
Sydney sitting on the Whoopie Cushion
A great picture of the girls looking at a present.