You can go now, 2016.

Before welcoming 2017 I have a few little family moments to document here. Of course my New Year Resolutions list  is full of goals to take more pictures and write more of our moments down. I love our little girls, and I would love them to see themselves during these enchanting years. They really are delightful ... 85% of the time.

I was in a minor car accident - which was technically my fault, but I maintain the other lady was a maniac - so our van was in the shop for TWO WEEKS right before Christmas. Mostly we didn't go anywhere, since our area doesn't really have sidewalks, but a few times I'd run an errand after Eldon got home from work. One time I didn't have Brooke's car seat with me, so I let her ride in Eve's booster. She's almost one year old ... no biggie, right? I took this picture because she LOVED it so much. Brooke sat there like a little crime boss, holding her armrests and watching everything around us. Sorry, baby girl ... I know you don't have a bow and you're wearing a boy outfit. That hardly ever happens. :) I can't wait for her to be front-facing. It's so nice to look behind me and actually see her.

Right after Christmas we drove over to spend a few days with my brother Bryce's family. We were there for Noelle's birthday, so we brought her presents with us and had a party. Which I didn't take pictures of. It's a rough time of year to have a birthday, but one of the perks is that we are usually around cousins or grandparents, and that makes the day so much more fun. I'd asked her what she wanted for a gift and she told me she wanted a new baby doll. A boy one. Boy dolls are surprisingly difficult to find in the style she was hoping for, so I just bought two girls and made some boy clothes. She was so happy, and hasn't put them down. That's what it's all about. :)

I'll get better at masculine clothes. I realize using blue yarn doesn't hide the feminine style. :) I sewed a darling little boy romper and then ruined it during the very last step. I was putting elastic in the leg casings and got my safety pin lodged in there in a way I can't even describe. I had to hide the evidence from Noelle so she wouldn't be too disappointed that the fabric she picked was a gonner. I'll try again when school starts.

Being with Bryce and Haley and their kids was so fun. Well worth the nasty colds Eldon and I caught from Bryce. :) The girls can't stop talking about their cousins and how much fun they all had together. There was minimal fighting, tons of laughter, and only a handful of injuries. That's a win. Haley is the most kind, gracious hostess there has every been. I didn't feel like I bothered her for even one second. That is a gift. I could kiss Bryce's feet for bringing her into my life.

Everett loves Brooke. He doted on her. He wanted to hold her all the time. He cooed at her and brought her toys and did everything he could think of to make her happy. I wanted to take him home with us. :) Those kids are the sweetest. I don't have a picture of Malcolm, which breaks my heart, but we love him too. And Ginny was my little buddy. Her voice is so cute, she could be in an animated film. I picture her character fluffy and purple. I don't know why.

Eve is old enough for Primary now. Man oh man, does her teacher have her work cut out. :) Eve isn't necessarily a trouble-maker, she's just busy. She did NOT want to sit still for singing time or sharing time or any of the other times. In her defense, she just sat through 70 minutes of Sacrament Meeting, so she's ready to let loose a little. That's her new smiling face, by the way. She scrunches up her eyes and nose and makes a silly noise. I have to snap pictures between "smiles" to document what her face really looks like in normal life.

We love you, girlies! Can't wait for another year of being your mom. :)

P.S. We made some family goals this afternoon. Among other things, Chiara is going to read 10 books that Eldon picks for her, in addition to her normal reading. Her reward will be a toy of some kind. Noelle is going to use her words to talk about her feelings and read one book by the end of the year. Her reward will be ice cream. Eve is going to try so hard to go potty in the big girl potty. Her reward, and I'm not making this up, will be chocolate chips. As a family we are going to focus on being kind, cheerful, and serving others. I'm going to do consistent journaling and finally lose my accumulated (ahem) baby weight. I'm not sure what Eldon will decide on, but I'm sure he will do great at it. I love new years!

Happy 3rd Birthday, Evie!!

What I remember most about Eve when she was a newborn is how happy she was. By the time she was two weeks old she was smiling for real. Because she was happy. She is just a ray of sunshine this girl. She is silly and funny and always giggling. I totally adore her.

For her birthday I wanted her to pick what we would have for dinner, what kind of dessert she wanted, and what we should do for a fun activity. I considered having friends over for a party, but with Daddy out of town for two months ... Mommy has a lower tolerance for chaos. :)

So she told me she wanted cupcakes. Great. I can do that. What do you want for dinner? Cupcakes. Right, we're having cupcakes. What do you want for DINNER? Cupcakes! Okay, moving on. What should we do for your birthday? Cupcakes! Do you want to go somewhere fun? Cupcakes! At this point I just gave up, and let the older girls pick. :)

We went to Chuck E. Cheese for our activity. My girls LOVE that place. Mostly because it's associated with grandparents, but also because they get to run free for two hours and then spend $20 worth of tokens on three tootsie pops and rings that will fall apart before bedtime.

Awesome.

Evie loves the rides that go nowhere and do almost nothing. :) This is one of her silly faces.

Chiara and Noelle love the simulated roller coaster. Hearing them giggle while the seats jiggle all over the place is one of my favorite sounds.

Eve mostly played on the giant slide. I kept trying to engage her in games where she could pump dog mouths full of plastic balls, squirt water at tiny animals, or spin wheels for tickets. But now that she is actually tall enough to climb up the platforms and go down the slide, that's all she really wanted to do. This picture is blurry and taken through the mesh of the structure, but I love it because her face is so happy. She gives me silly smiles all the time, but this one is just her being her.

After two hours of this we went home and had her party. I'd decorated during naptime so when she woke up it was all pretty and magical for her.

That's as pretty and magical as birthdays get around here. I did buy a cupcake stand, which is a step up for us. Someday I'm going to cover the wall in pictures of the birthday girl, but to do that I'd have to find them and develop them. Both daunting tasks.

I told the girls they looked like the four good fairies with those hats on. :) Brooke ate hers after this picture was taken.

Eve loved her party, and her presents, and her cupcakes. I think she felt special, which is the entire point of everything mothers do on birthdays, right? She loved her hat, but kept fiddling with it. I told her to be careful, but ...

Wish I knew how to customize these collages to tell the story in order, but you get the picture. Happy and excited, singing to herself, pull the hat and snap the face, weep over all the broken feelings.

But she got over it, with a little help. Note the cupcake missing on the stand ... :)

Brooke smacked Chiara's hat onto her face, which made everyone laugh hysterically. Everything Brooke does is entertaining and charming and adorable around here. Even when it hurts.

Noelle laughing at herself showing me her food. I was just so happy they let me get away with making macaroni and cheese for dinner I didn't care what she did while she ate it. Sometimes when mommy spends the afternoon decorating, and baking and frosting cupcakes, she's not in the mood to cook anything else.

And our little Brooke ... even though she's teething she's still cheerful. Bless her.

The biggest hit of the whole day, though, was fire. Eve loved blowing out that candle, and each time she did she would laugh like a maniac and say, "More fire, Mom!!" I must have relit that thing 20,000 times. If she ever becomes a pyro they could use this birthday footage to send me to jail. 

I just love her. I love that she's a part of our family, I love that she makes us laugh all the time. I love that 99 times out of 100 I can silly her out of any bad mood or tantrum by making faces or tickling her or pretending I can't see her and start looking around frantically. :) She is delightful. When Eve is having a rough time, she holds up her arms and tells me she needs a snuggle. I hold her to my heart, bury my face in her hair, and send silent prayers of gratitude that this little girl is my daughter. 

The last three years have been a joyful privilege, my girl. 

Wow.

Maybe I shouldn't write when I'm cranky.

In my defense, I hardly ever yell at my kids. And when I do, I apologize and ask my kids to forgive me, which is why Noelle said what she did. When they get in trouble and I need to convince them they are not "horrible" or "the worst" as they weep that they are, I use myself as an example of someone who they love and who loves them, but who sometimes makes bad choices. Maybe that kind of humility with your children is a tactical error, and I may regret it later down the road, but for now it helps me put them back together again when they're brokenhearted.

I'm not keeping this blog to make my character or my life look perfect. It's not as crazy as the picture I painted last night, but we definitely have unraveled moments. I love my children, my husband, and my Father in Heaven. I think the Spirit abides in my home more often than not. My daughters love each other more than they fight. Ours is a good, good life.

Every now and then, though, cranky wins, and I'm going to be real about it. :)

P.S. Also, I never say friggin' in real life.

Caution: Writer is not feeling cheerful.

I don't like to write when I'm cranky. But since this cranky cloud has lingered longer than I'd like, I'm faced with two options. I could continue to hide in my room, watching Gilmore Girls and crocheting, or I could let our family history include me in all my cranky glory.

In the name of authenticity, I chose the latter. Like I've said, someday when my daughters have a lovely mother who never yells or says crap or goes through the drive-thru without getting anything for them they will marvel she was once the woman who wrote these blog posts. I'll be like our own friggin' family miracle.

This morning I was cranky as I got the kids ready for church. I came down the stairs with the baby to find multiple infractions of family rules. I was not happy about it. I sent one child to her room for one offense, then set another one cleaning her offense off the carpet. I yelled at all of them, because that's what I do when I'm cranky, and told them their choices were totally not okay.

Huh. Ironic, that last one.

Then I saw it. An apple on the carpet. An apple that probably cost almost a whole dollar because friggin' produce costs a fortune right now and the cheap apples are mealy. An apple that had two or three half-hearted nibbles out of it. Like the owner of the teeth was sitting there thinking, I usually love apples but ... I don't know, right now I'm not really feeling the apple thing, but I'm waaaaay too comfortable on the couch I'm not supposed to be eating on so I'm definitely not going to take it back to the kitchen, and Mom will be here any minute so if I just chuck it on the floor she'll see it and throw a tantrum like she taught me to do while she takes the apple to the kitchen and I'll probably get yelled at but it's easier than having to get up off the couch and do it myself. Perfect. Also this last bite has lost its savor while I sat here thinking all that so I should probably spit it out. On the couch.

And I lost it.

I yelled at Eve for wasting her apple, which made her cry, which meant I needed to give her a friggin' hug or the weeping would last longer. And I was mid-lecture about how we don't waste food in our family and how I need her to make better choices when Noelle's little voice piped up from the kitchen table.

"We forgive you, Mom."

Oh, kid, those were the wrong words at the wrong moment.

"WHAT?" I turned on her. "You forgive me for WHAT??"

"For making bad choices." She answered in a calm, I-believe-I'll-have-the-salmon kind of voice.

"Oh for the-- what are y-- you've got to be kidding m-- THAT'S IT!!"

I threw my hands up in the air and started cleaning something on the floor, I can't even remember what it was. Probably friggin' apple chunks. All I remember is looking up when Eldon came out of the kitchen and walked toward the couch with his face contorted out of control from trying not to laugh. In that precise moment I saw the ridiculous hilarity of the situation and my behavior and I laughed. Eldon, relieved I'm sure, let out his hysterical laughter too and the cloud of rage that had been smothering the living room dissipated.

He still hasn't stopped telling me every hour or so that he forgives me for my bad choices. I don't know how long the joke will last. Probably forever.

Here are some pictures of my friggin' kids.

Not you, Brooke ... you're perfect. Here, have some of Mommy's diet coke. It doesn't taste as good as the caffeinated kind, but it does the trick.

Oh, and does it look like Eve took scissors to her shirt? That's weird. Oh, you know, I think that's exactly when she did. Around the same time Noelle cut up the fitted sheet on her bed and Chiara cut a chunk off the hooded towel I sewed for her to use in her "explorer kit."

 Those were my very favorite sheets. 

Raising Foodies

I have a four year old who loves peaches. She ate them all so quickly that the day came when she wanted me to put a "cut-up peach" in her lunch for school, and the whole crate of them was gone. I promised I'd get more at Costco. But when I went to Costco the peaches looked a little ... gloomy. But the nectarines looked and smelled amazing, so I got some of those instead. I figured, they taste similar and nectarines don't have the fuzz. She'll love them.

So the next day I cut one up, put it in a plastic container and slipped it into her lunch for a surprise. I was actually expecting her to remind me of the promised peach - my kids never forget ANYTHING - but she didn't. When she got home from school that afternoon I asked her how her day was and all those things, then I asked her about lunch.

"Did you like your lunch, sweetheart?"

"Yeah."

"Were you so surprised about the peach I put in there???"

"Um, well ... I didn't eat it."

"Oh, why didn't you eat it?"

"Well, it didn't really taste the same."

"You didn't like the taste?"

"No, it tasted different."

"Well, it was actually a nectarine I put in there. Costco didn't have any good peaches, so I thought you'd like nectarines instead."

"I don't like them."

Well, dang! Anything else? 

This happens to me all the time. I don't know why I'm ever, EVER surprised. My kids know what kind of cheeses they like, what kind of syrup they like (oh and not in a bottle, by the way, but made from scratch), what kind of apples, pumpkin pie, and noodles they like. They refuse to eat school lunches. They would literally rather go hungry; I'm not even making that up. Store bought pizza is NOT a treat, turns out. Macaroni and cheese is for babies and hospitals. Chicken nuggets?  Newest item on the official yuck list. 

Periodically I make them try food they already "know" they don't like. Noelle doesn't like tomatoes or olives. And every time she tries them again she chews for a minute, spits it out and says, "I still don't like that." 

"Okay. Thanks for trying!" I say. Then we go on with our lives. 

Top Ramen is, however, the best thing to ever come out of my kitchen, and they would eat it every single day. It's kind of a tradition now to have it whenever Eldon is out of town. I fed it to him one time when we were newlyweds in college. He was not impressed. 

And they love mint. Mint chocolate, mint candies, mint lip gloss. Mint mint mint. After I got my oldest on the bus this morning, I gave the younger girls a mint lifesaver as a bribe to take pictures for 30 seconds. 

My four-year-old, the peach lover, will actually raid the medicine closet and eat minty cough drops like candy. Bubble gun flavored tooth paste? For babies. Okay, fresh mint it is.

Do all children have such crazy food preferences? My husband made the lunch sandwiches the other day and every child had a different request. Peanut butter with jam. Peanut butter without jam. Peanut butter with honey, if there's honey, then with jam is there's no honey. Crust off. Cut into halves. Cut into triangles. Cut into "square fourths." I'm not even making that up. He looked at me and said, "They're sandwiches." I know, Honey ... oh, I know.

Our oldest is truly gifted. She can detect when I sneak in the Mexican blend grated cheese in the quesadilla or if I do like I'm supposed to and use the mild long horn cheese that I grated myself. She loves chia seeds in pancake batter because she likes "the texture" better. She's seven. 

And if I ever, EVER have a bad day and try to use bottled pasta sauce, no one will eat it. Not even the 2-year-old. 

My mothering style is a lot like my mom's. I love to cater to your wishes. I show my love by remembering what you like and don't like and filling your life with things you do like to help the things you don't like go down a little easier. I want my kids to know that in this world where there are bullies and bug bites and bruises, there is a woman thinking of them, and that their opinions matter. If I can do something you like, I do it. If I can't, you know it's because I couldn't, but I would have if I could have. Either way, the love still comes through.

Eldon and I actually had an "ah ha!" moment as a couple the other night when we were in the kitchen. He was making mashed potatoes. I told him he could eat them and take leftovers to work because the girls don't like mashed potatoes. He told me I could put them on the table, tell the girls that's what for dinner, and they can eat it or go hungry. I told him I'm not that kind of mother. If I want the girls to eat potatoes I will prepare them in a way I know they like, and serve them for dinner. I'm not going to intentionally prepare the potatoes in a way I know my children don't like. 

He told me we make them eat things they don't like all the time. I said, I know, because I haven't found a way to make broccoli, or zucchini (except the bread), or most beans palatable yet. But if I could, I would. And I will keep trying new recipes, new spices, new combinations, until they like food that is good for them. This is one of the ways I show my love and respect to my children. Why torture them if you don't have to?? It's like saying, "I'm sorry, making food you actually enjoy eating is not worth the effort to me." I could almost see the light bulb go on in his eyes. He got it. 

They aren't spoiled. They're foodies. :)

First Week Of School

We have lived in Birmingham, Alabama for just over a month now. The beginning of school really snuck up on me. I was LOVING spending my days with these darling girls. We discovered the local movie theatre does a $5 Tuesday event during the summer when we only had two weeks until school. So we went. Twice.

Chiara said, "A movie AND popcorn??? This is the best day of my life!!!" I'd even smuggled in some candy and water in the diaper bag, so it was truly a feast. We saw the new Ice Age movie, and my favorite part was hearing my kids giggling in the darkness. Although I have to admit, there were a couple times I was laughing the hardest in the theatre. I'm such a child. The parents around me snickered every time I had to remind Eve to be quiet and she would yell, "Okay, Mom, I be so QUIET!!!!!"

The other favorite activity over here is the cool park that does a fair kind of thing every Friday night. Eldon took the big girls (I stayed home with Brooke) the first time, not knowing about the activities there, and the girls came back with balloons, candy, and face paint.

Our last Saturday before school started we went to Walmart for a few last minute things. I let them dress themselves, and they looked like total street urchins. But as we crossed the street they all just kind of came together and joined hands ... It looked so sweet I had to document it. So I stood in the middle of the street and took a picture.

I love spontaneous sister love. We actually have a big mason jar I let the girls put orbeez in when I catch them being sweet to each other. As a mother, I just feel that if I can teach them to be KIND, over and above everything else, they will be okay. In the April 2012 Conference Elder Holland said something that has become our family motto:

I love this so, so much. When the girls get out of the car in the morning I tell them I love them and remind them to be kind. That's it. I hope I can be an example of kindness in my own walk before God.

Whoa, don't fall over!! :)

I love these little women so much. I love raising a little gaggle of girls. This morning my brother and sister-in-law welcomed a baby boy into their family. Bennett was born so early I didn't see the texts until we were in church, and I thought, "I wonder what it would be like to love a little boy the way I love my little girls." Sometimes it twinges my heart just a little that I don't know what that feels like. 

But then one of my girls will pop through my thought bubble and into my real face, and I think, "Nope ... I'm good." :)

They're Like Dominoes

This silly child:

 

is sick:

So sick she didn't even make it all the way to my bed to wake me up. She just crashed right there on the floor until I almost stepped on her when I got up with Brooke.

And because she loves Brooke so much:

She shared her germs. By rubbing her snotty face all over Brooke's hands. 

So now this cheerful baby:

looks like this:

Of course I don't want my kids to get sick, but I have to admit ... I looooooove all the extra snuggles.