Eliza Hits Double Digits!

 Well, it happened. My little baby turned 10 years old! I can't hardly believe it! First, that I have been a mother for 10 years?! You'd think I would have figured out to do it better by now. Second, how is she 10 years old already?! Eliza is funny, smart, spiritual, compassionate, responsible, a hard worker, kind, and a blessing to our family. I have said this before, but I really believe that we were blessed with such an amazing girl in part due to the faith we showed in having a baby so young in life. She is a tender mercy to us as parents.

Her birthday was on a Sunday this year and definitely a theme of the day that day was food. She wanted three yummy meals. In all honesty, her appreciating good food is something I love about her so I can't blame her for wanting good stuff. For breakfast she had German pancakes with blueberry sauce. Lunch was fresh green bean salad with breadsticks. Dinner was lasagna with steamed broccoli, and she picked a delicious cherry pie from Costco for dessert. I know, as a rule I don't buy dessert but it simplified out day of cooking. Everything was pretty excellent, if I do say so myself. :) 

In the afternoon we went to the temple grounds and took photos. I'll post those later. Then, we came home for dinner and presents with Grandpa. Eliza received nice pillow case covers for some decorative pillows on her bed, magnetic beads, a spiralgraph, a birthday dress and cardigan, shell from Miriam, journal, and crochet stuff. 

Eliza also received a huge yummy cupcake from the primary. It was really sweet.

We decided this year to throw her a birthday party at our house. Unfortunately as you can see in the above picture, she came down with pink eye just two days before her scheduled party date. We postponed a week and the whole gaggle of girls came to our house last night. We invited all the girls in her school class plus Sadie from her church class. They actually all came, even Kaylee whose birthday was that very day! We started out the evening with Costco pizza, fruit, and carrots. This was the cutest part of the evening to me because they all wanted to tell me things and kept raising their hands to be called on. It was really cute! 

After eating we played games: And Then and Pie Face. Both were hits! And Then is a story writing game we got from William for Christmas. It is basically when you take turns writing a line in the story without knowing what others wrote before you. There were a lot of bathroom, kissing, prison, and stealing jokes. Then, Pie Face is always a good time.

After games we had birthday rice crispy treats that are normal rice crispies with extra marshmallows and Fruity Pebbles to add color. Then, they watched Horton Hears a Who on our new big screen. We unfortunately didn't start it on time so it was right at the climax of the show when the parents started showing up to pick up their kiddos. It was a pretty solid choice though for a movie because it is funny for that age group, but also fine for my sensitive girls. It is also came out a few years ago so it seemed new to almost all of those girls. Win! 

I felt good about the the party and satisfied that everyone seemed to have fun even though we didn't rent out a big facility or spend a lot of money on her party (I guess we did buy a TV but that wasn't just for her party). There was a super uncomfortable moment when one girl made an inappropriate joke, but other than that, it was great. We gave out Unicorn popcorn with a Redbox gift code as a party favor. It was funny to hear the kids ask, "What is Redbox?" 

Happy 10th birthday wonderful Eliza girl!!!

H at 3.5 years old

Holland is at such a fun age! She is hilarious, opinionated, sweet, unreasonable, loving, volatile, empathetic, and smart! She goes to our little preschool coop and preschool classes at the gym. I also try to do real preschool with her at home--reading lesson, workbook pages, practice writing. All of that other stuff is just bonus--fun and crafts.



Holland is such a good buddy for me. She loves the one on one attention that preschool stuff gets her. She is three years old which means that I can anticipate what I am going to get from her. Some days she is as sweet as can be. Other days she is out to get me. Some days she likes to play independently. Other days she wants to be in my face the whole day. It is all good. I think because I am around those other girls for our preschool group I stay pretty grateful for my own 3 year old. Also, Miriam was a really hard three year old so comparatively Holland is on the reasonable side.


Of course this isn't always true. She wants the other parent always. Especially in the morning when John is at work, Mommy simply won't do. When I say "Good Morning" to her when I go in her room to get her up, she replies with, "I want Daddy." She has shut the door in my face and has thrown many, many tantrums about this issue. She warms up to me throughout the day though. And by bedtime when Daddy puts her to bed, all she wants is Mommy. *insert eyeroll*
She adores and is adored by her sisters. She loves being babysat by Eliza. Nothing makes her laugh as much as playing with Miriam. They are both so sweet and kind to her. We are blessed.


One of her less cute activities is when she wants to play doggy or kitty with me. It wouldn't be so bad but she uses this fake baby sounding voice that is really wearing as a day progresses. Her real little voice is so darling.
Holland doesn't sing much these days, but she cuddles and kisses a lot! I loved it the other day when she said, "I want to kiss Mommy with wet lips!" Then she licked her lips several times before kissing me. And today during Sacrament Meeting, she looked up as sweet as can be, "Daddy, do you love my beautiful lips?" She's a riot!

We love our little one!

Holland loves her flip flops so much. She cares a lot about what she wears, but fortunately she occasionally lets me dress her, which proper incentives of course. I follow an LDS parenting expert on Instagram. She says that it is completely appropriate to give incentives to your kids for good behavior. She pointed out that adults perform for incentives all the time--paycheck, respect, satisfaction. It made me feel better about that parenting technique.

 Holland really loves that purple crown she got for Christmas. She keeps it in all the time--way more than any of my other girls kept on crowns or headbands. It is kind of awesome.

Holland still says she loves Sophie the most, but really I think she loves our family best. Shhh. Don't tell her!

Valentine's Day

I love Valentine's Day! I understand it always isn't going to be so wonderful, but it sure is right now. I talk to mom's of older girls and just dread the stories I hear about how their girls hate Valentine's Day because they don't feel special like so and so. Oh yikes! Just appreciate the season of life I am in. And I really do! I feel like the luckiest mommy in the world to have these three little ones. I can't believe I am lucky enough be married to such a wonderful man, and have three sweet girls that are so loving and delightful (almost always). 

For right now though, I am loving Valentine's Day. We celebrated the whole week by doing Valentine's themed preschool activities. I did interviews with the little girls. It was hilarious. Their personalities definitely shined through on those interviews. One of the little girls is a little spicy, and she told me during the interview that sometimes she doesn't want to play with her mom and only wants to play with her sister, but her mommy won't let her. I omitted that one on her card. It was pretty great. 

 On Valentine's Day evening we had a celebration with our girls. Daddy surprised us with very fancy filet mignon steaks. They were unbelievably good! We used our fancy dinnerware and ate by candlelight. I made cards for everyone. John actually mailed me a card through the postal service. This was particularly cute because I have really been loving this Hallmark show called "Signed, Sealed, Delivered," which is about postal detectives. It is the cutest show! Since I have been loving that show so much, it was really adorable that John mailed me the card. :)

Daddy gave the girls each a little Valentine's balloon. I gave the girls cards, which was funny because the older girls loved theirs, but Holland was mad when she opened hers because there wasn't more to it. You win some, you lose some. :)

 Holland got the berry card. She loved the balloon though. We also did the traditional fancy floats, with sparkling cider. Turns out, Holland also doesn't want sparkling cider messing up her "banilla" ice cream, which is her favorite.

     My husband is seriously the best ever! 

 Eliza belle made us cards too. They are cute, and she was so proud of the pop are hearts! There is a happy girls with her Valentine's balloon. Little girls are the best!

That weekend John and I took advantage of a Parents' Night Out at the Y to go on a Valentine's date. We got dinner and then went East Coast Swing dancing. Turns out we are more comfortable with Country Swing, but we still had a great time!

Pres Nelson Phoenix Devotional

On February 10th we had a wonderful, unique opportunity to attend a fireside by President Nelson and President Oaks and their wives at the Cardinals Stadium. About 68,000 people attended. It was amazing! We thought it would be really cold, but it wasn't too bad. So we were a bit over prepared, but it was fine.
Sister Oaks talked about how life is supposed to be so hard. She shared a message from Elder Holland saying that life is so hard because salvation is not a cheap experience. We must be willing to walk the path that the Savior walked and shed a tear of sorrow that He shed.

 President Oaks talked a lot about messages from recent conference addresses. He talked about how the changes in church don't make us better. It has to be the changes in our desires and actions that make us better. The home centered church will help us learn doctrine, increase faith, and foster better personal worship.  He also emphasized how we need to not let ourselves be a slave to our phone. Let it be a tool for us. I really liked how he said that we need to take care about how we label ourselves. Don't let other attributes become more important than our identity as children of God.

 Sister Nelson talked about her experience as the prophet's wife since his call in January of 2018. That was remarkable to hear about. She said that he often gets revelation at night, and she is prompted to stay or leave. She emphasized how everything in the Lord's church is HIS: His priesthood, His prophet, His church.

President Nelson talked about the Abrahamic covenant. I loved his quote. "God gives his children exactly the miracles they need." He went through 4 promises of the Abrahmic covenant. I loved how he said that we are different in happy ways from the world. He also talked about the gathering of Israel. The gathering needed the Priesthood and the Book of Mormon. President Nelson invited us to pray each day intentionally to know what to do that day to help gather Israel. He said that this can look like teaching children, family history, using time to draw closer to the Lord, repenting, and reaching out to the community to help relieve suffering.

It was a powerful evening. I really felt the love of the Lord. I also felt the Holy Ghost witness to me of the prophetic call of these men. We were blessed to be there!

Hemorrhaging Money

 Towards the end of January our spending exploded. The phrase we kept using to describe it was that we were "hemorrhaging money." Really doing our part to help the economy. It all started with my buying a new phone because my old one was on the fritz. So that was $900 with all of the accessories. I like my new phone mainly because it takes pretty pictures.

Then, our computer literally started smoking. The speakers were sounding funny, so John took off the side panel to look at the sound card and then when we plugged it back in there was a nasty smell of burning electronics and smoke coming out of the back. That was bad. So we had to buy a new computer. That was about $600.
Then, there were a couple of repairs. One on our washing machine. We are really hoping the new part works this time. (The last part we ordered was worse than the one we are trying to replace.) There was a car repair too.

THEN, there were a bunch of travel expenses all at once. We booked all of our lodging for the New York and Oregon trips this summer. We also bought our flights for Oregon, although my mom gave us money for that. We also learned that when you need to rent a car, it's best to book it as soon as possible. I also played with the times and got very different rates.

 And just to put the cherry on top, we decided to buy a big TV on a superbowl sale. There are several valid reasons why we did this, but I still feel a little guilty that we made a non-essential purchase while all of these other expenses were coming at us. I am surprised how much I love it though, especially the sound bar we got with it!

Happily we got our tax refund early, and it was more than we expected it to be. Also, John got an incredible raise this year, not in effect yet, but we are definitely thrilled about that. These are both really lucky considering the start of the year finances we were having. Fortunately, we are have curbed our spending this last month. So here's to building up that savings account again. :)