Five Whole Days

About two weeks ago we got to have Eli for 5 whole days. His parents got to go on vacation, and Elsie. Eli got to come to our house, the lucky duck. Ok, maybe he won't think so years down the road when he reads this (I'm sure he will), but he had a great time at our house.

First of all, his father is a liar. I've head all these horror stories about putting Eli to bed. He could not have been a better sleeper. For all 5 days he went to bed and had nap time right on schedule. He did wake up one time in the middle of the night, but went right back to sleep after I went and checked on him. And he did throw one major temper tantrum after I had to wake him up from a nap to go pick up Sophie from school, but I learned my lesson after that. His nap times were so thrilling that even my children were excited to participate.


That is the first time they have had a nap in about 3 years. Chloe and Sophie were such good helpers with Eli. We got him on Saturday, so they were around to help the whole weekend. Knowing how hard it would be without my super helpers, I made them a deal. I let Chloe stay home from school on Monday to help out, and then Sophie got to stay home on Tuesday, so I only had him alone on Wednesday. This has been Chloe's dream for a very long time. She wants to babysit so bad. And it was nice to give her a day all to herself, where she wasn't fighting with Sophie over him. They assure me that if I would just have another baby they would take care of it -- changing diapers and all. And now I'm sure they would. Not that Eli is still in diapers, but they took care of all the dirty deeds.

I think whenever Eli is dropped off at my house his parents expect to see a photo shoot afterward. I guess I'm getting pretty lazy, because it just didn't happen this time. I only got the sleeping picture (because I was so excited to see my kids napping I HAD to get a picture of that!), but Chloe took a couple.

Mother's Day

In honor of the one week anniversary, I'll finally blog about my wonderful Mother's Day. My husband really pulled it off this year. He went to a ton of effort and planned a surprise trip for me. I wasn't feeling very well for a couple days leading up to the big event, so Thursday night I was just exhausted. He told me to go to bed early and said he'd take care of getting the girls up in the morning so I wouldn't have to worry about much. I didn't set my alarm, so they came and woke me up at 8:15 (when we usually leave for school). I was panicked about them being late, but Brandon made me (in my groggy state) sit down for some breakfast -- only to find a binder on my chair. It contained an itinerary for the trip. He had taken the day off of work, notified the girls' teachers they wouldn't be at school (and made sure they got all their work done ahead of time). The binder not only contained our hotel information, but then several pages of different activities I might want to choose from. The kids and Brandon were all packed and ready to go, but I still had to get ready (I guess they didn't want to risk packing for me!)

So, off to Heber we went. I had mentioned to Brandon several weeks ago (during one of his sneaky interrogation periods) that I'd love to go back there. On the way we kind of talked about what we wanted to do, and I decided we should definitely do the train ride. We went to the train station first and got our tickets, but had a couple hours to kill so we went on a hike. It wasn't very pretty this time of year. Everything was still dead, but the weather was gorgeous and a nice day to be outdoors.



Then we rode the Heber Valley Railroad. We did the Soldier Hollow Express. We were happy to get an indoor car, recalling our trip to Durango where we were so excited to get an open car but nearly froze to death. We were able to walk around between cars, so we could go outside when we wanted, but it was also nice to be able to head back in too!



I was pretty happy to find someone who offered to take a family portrait!



We spent the evening relaxing in our hotel room. We ordered a pizza and rented a movie. The stars were not aligned for us the next day. We were going to take the kids swimming in the hotel pool (Brandon made sure they had one!), only to find out it was closed!! It was an outdoor pool so that didn't surprise me, but they had a whirlpool and sauna that was indoors and I'm still not sure why they weren't open.

So, we canned that idea and decided to go hike up to this waterfall. We got 5 miles up the canyon and the road was closed! There was a big parking lot there, so we still stopped and got out for a while. I'm sure the kids had just as much fun hiking around there as they would have on a real trail.

So, then I decided I wanted to go check out this art center in Park City. The girls were excited for it because they thought they were going to get to do some pottery, but it turned out it was just a gallery. The nice part about it was that the current exhibits were all done by K-12 students, so it really made it more relevant for the girls. After that we just hung out in Park City. I've never been down to that part of town, so it was fun to look at all the shops and see how crazy expensive everything is in that world. Chloe wanted to go into a jewelry store to look for earrings. I told her it would be fun to look, but they wouldn't have anything in her price range. I only saw one price tag in the store, on a ring for $2799. But that was nothing compared to a painting I saw that I loved -- for only $45,000.

And then we came home to our humble life -- that we can afford. Where I am reminded what true happiness is.



And it's all because of these two that I even get to celebrate Mother's Day. I love you guys! And thanks for the wonderful trip.

Decluttering

I have a goal: to become who I was meant to be. I believe Heavenly Father has a plan for me, and it's time for me to start living it. Fortunately, he has also created a ton of other women whom he has similar plans for that are helping me on my journey. Unfortunately, not everyone gets it. And that's part of why it's so hard to do. I feel like I'm waging a battle just to accomplish the things I was meant to. Not everyone I admire does ALL these things, but here's a good list of what people I consider heros are doing:

• homeschool their children
  
• question the validity of mercury in our vaccines
  
• give birth at home
  
• limit their children's extra-curricular activities
  
• don't allow TV or video games
  
• throw out their microwaves
  
• replace toxic plastic food containers with glass
  
• eat a whole foods, plant based diet
  
• grow a garden
  
• limit their expenses
  
• recycle
  
• buy organic
  
• are well read

I'm sure I'll think of more, but that's a start. In trying to become this person I feel I am meant to be, I started decluttering my home about a year and a half ago. We have a very small house, so I was quite surprised at how much JUNK I found in it. Last year I felt like I was taking loads to DI constantly. When we sat down to do our taxes this year I pulled out the receipts, and Brandon was shocked to see how much I had donated. But it was real. And we're not done! That was mostly my stuff.

The girls' room is another story. I've learned a lot lately about how to help my children learn true happiness. I knew they had way too much stuff. I tried to follow my mentors steps on helping them get rid of it, but to be honest my kids do not act like hers. It just didn't work, even after repeated tries. I finally had to do it my own way. I boxed up whatever they couldn't take care of (translation: anything they couldn't put away). I did this several times, but I never got rid of their stuff. It just sat in boxes in storage. The kids knew where it was, so I think that's why they were ok with it. Then a short while ago, after seeing some yard sales in the neighborhood, they got their own idea (Sophie was the force behind this). They were finally ready to sell their stuff! I told them if they would wait until a date I felt like I could work with, I'd help them AND they could have all the stuff in storage to sell.

This past Saturday we finally made it happen! They got a bunch of boxes and sorted everything by how much they wanted to charge for things. There were no tears, no trying to hang on to toys that don't bring real happiness. Just excitement. They had a blast, and made some money doing it! And since I completely forgot to get a picture of them out selling their things, here's a preview/hint of our next big project we're up to:

Who's That Girl?

I know I just blogged about this girl, but she's already changed so much! Her Grandma Nicholls gave her a Claire's gift card for her birthday. She wanted it to go get her ears pierced. I had changed my mind on the whole ear piercing thing, but since I had already let Sophie do it it was pretty hard to convince anyone to join my cause. It's hard being a mom! We just had a short council where I got to plead my cause and explain why I didn't want her to do it, then she got to make her own choice. She chose to go through with it. I took her yesterday. She knew she was going to have to pay for anything her gift card didn't cover, so she was wise in choosing her earrings. She went with the cheapest ones they had (where Sophie got almost the most expensive!) I think that was a good choice. She even had money left over, so she picked out a pair of glasses. She was trying to get me to pick something for myself, which was so sweet, but I didn't want her to use her gift on me. She did let me choose which glasses she got, though. She has been so happy, which makes us all happy :)

Happy (or not) Birthday!

Someone had a birthday around here. Chloe turned 9 on Monday! She was a turd the whole day -- not the sweet girl we had been seeing the last few months. But we still love her. She knew exactly what she wanted, and wasn't afraid to TELL us how it was going to be. She was just a little excited. She even decorated the house herself. We finally had to give in and let her open one present on Sunday. Sophie volunteered to let her open hers. I was mean and made her wait until AFTER Brandon got home from work to open the rest on Monday. Then we headed out to Noodles & Co. for dinner -- her choice, but a very good choice, I might add. She didn't want a cake or anything. All she had asked for was bananas, oranges and cauliflower (yes, this is MY child). But then during dinner she did ask if we could go to DQ afterward, so we did that.

While we were killing time waiting for Brandon to get home from work we went out to get some pictures. We're all so happy that we finally have some tulips blooming, and this is the spot she picked.

s p i n a c h

Do you see that big, beautiful bowl of spinach? My husband grew that. He planted a fall garden last year after we had harvested all of our summer garden. We didn't get much out of it. But we were pleasantly surprised a few weeks ago when all our snow melted, and there were all the plants that had been planted, still thriving. He went out and picked a bunch of it the other day, and we made a delicious, humongous green smoothie. As good as those smoothies are, there's just something about using ingredients out of our own garden that makes it even better. That's what I call Satisfaction.

Sophie's Turn

We're on Spring Break! I thought we might go a little crazy since I didn't plan a single thing, but two days into it we're doing great. Today after getting all our chores done Sophie came to me and asked if she could cut her hair -- chin length! I made sure she understood how short that really was. Then I found out they wanted Chloe to cut it. That kind of scared me. We finally all agreed that I would let Chloe cut a couple inches off. That would give her some practice, and hopefully let her feel like she had done something, but would also give us some room to work with if she messed up too much. They went right to work, and I have to say Chloe was faster than any hair stylist I've seen! It wasn't exactly straight, but Sophie really liked it. Enough that she decided this length was good, and didn't want to go get it cut to her chin. And they've requested that Brandon be the one to straighten it up a bit. I'm sure he can handle that. But here's the cutie pie as is: