Wordless Wednesday - Happy Thanksgiving! :)

Happy Birthday, Joe!

My little guy turned 4 today. FOUR! I have a four year old. That's unbelievable to me! He's growing up so fast and I just love him more everyday than I did the last. I'm so grateful to be his mommy and to have the connection with him that I do. He is just the funnest little guy with his random songs and the funny things he tells me. He's grown to be a wonderful big brother and is so sweet - well, most of the time - to Kathrynn that it almost brings me to tears. He is the biggest helper in the world and actually cleans up after himself without being asked - I love that! After every meal he always takes all of his dishes to the sink. I love that he does this, though it does force me to make sure he ALWAYS has plastic dishes. :) Joe gives the best hugs in the world and is really so generous with them. He makes friends so easily and already has a little girlfriend (who very openly told me and Steve that she's "in love with Joe.")

I am so grateful to be Joe's mommy. He has the sweetest, most compassionate spirit. He really makes my heart melt. I love him so much.

Happy Birthday, buddy! :)

Hello, Guilt.

I don't know if it just comes with being a mom or a woman who is constantly trying to better herself, but I have become well aquainted with guilt lately and today it came in a flood.

I've been called in our ward to work with Activity Day girls (8-11 year olds) and we planned a big mother-daughter party for our activity today. Unfortunately, I gave Kathrynn a cold that I developed on Sunday and she had this nasty yellow-green stuff coming out of her nose, so I decided that it would be best if I did not come tonight. Her immune system is weak and I just can't deal with another major illness in our house right now - and EVERYTHING is in the air right now. Plus, I didn't want to get anyone else sick, or gross any of the girls out. I made this decision a few hours before the activity, but had an impossible time reaching one of the other leaders to let her know. I left a message with her husband, but, as much as we love them, I think we all know they aren't the best at relaying those messages. So, I finally reached her about half an hour before we were due to be at the church to set up and felt just HORRIBLE. I was totally stricken with guilt the ENTIRE night over this. I'm not a slacker in my callings. I just didn't want to take my sick child out.

THEN... Steve went off to Young Men's and showed back up at our house with a couple of young women who were doing a service scavenger hunt, looking for food to give to people for Thanksgiving. First, let me say, I am HORRIBLE at doing anything on the fly. I'm a total OCD control freak "D" personality who needs to know exactly what's happening like 2 days before it happens. My brain literally does not function when something is put before me in a matter of seconds. Something I definitely know I need to work on, don't worry. :) Anyway, they handed me this list and I took the girls down to our food storage pantry and put a few things in a bag for them, all the while having a funny little banter with them about the insane amount of sugar cereal we have in our storage. OK, I buy things when I can get them ridiculously cheap, and that opportunity has come very often in the sugar cereal department. I'm officially no longer buying cereal because of it. Anyway, one of the girls comes from a family of 8 and was talking about how they don't have anything like that at their house and how they have to eat gross stuff - like oatmeal - for breakfast. I'm actually good friends with her mom, so this made me laugh, but that the same time I felt guilty. We are totally spoiled. Totally. We have tons of sugar cereal in our food storage. We have anything we may want or need at our fingertips and there are so many people who don't have anything. We have a surplus. Yes, we are exceedingly blessed. But at that moment, I almost felt bad for it.

Then I started feeling guilty that we only have 2 kids and are holding off a little longer before we even start thinking about a third. There's my friend's daughter.. my friend who is only a few years older than me and devotes her life to her 8 children. Of course, she has been married a LOT longer than Steve and I have and it wouldn't be physically possible, well it would, but not comfortably, for me to do the same, but I don't have a huge desire to jump the gun and get pregnant again. I want the dust to settle in our lives. I want our kids to not have stress for a while. I just want things to be consistent and peaceful before we have another baby.

Then the girls left and I realized I only gave them a few things and got the REAL picture of what they were doing and wished I had opened more of my pantry to them. I regretted not giving them the chicken in our freezer and thought of all of the people who had so much less than us in our own community.

To top everything off, I accidently poked Joe in the eye right before bed. That sent me over the guilt edge. He has this thing about grabbing my back pocket or the back belt loop on my pants and being my little train and I thought it was his hand, but it was somehow his face that I grabbed, poking him in the eye and leading to a good 10 minute cry on his part (and profuse teasing from Steve about how it'll be OK if Joe goes blind). I felt so so so bad! Of course, it didn't help that he was VERY tired and had been begging to go to bed like 30 minutes earlier. He's just been the sweetest, most fun little guy ever lately, and I hated ending his day that way. Today, we went the grocery store and in the produce section he started singing this song he was making up about all of the fruits and vegetables at the top of his lungs, causing everyone to giggle. He didn't need me to poke him in the eye. :(

So, that's my day. I'm hoping I get my fill of guilt for a while because it's exhausting.

Wordless Wednesday - Pure Joy

My Silly Little Guy

Joe had me laughing harder tonight that I have in a long time. He came up to me and started to tickle me and said the following:
"I tickle slow," then he sped up a little,
"I tickle fast," sped up some more,
"I tickle faster," sped up even more,
"I tickle CRAZY!"
I could not stop laughing! He thought he was doing a pretty awesome job tickling mommy - he was just hilarious! :)

Picture Tag

Here are the rules: 1. Go to your pictures 2. Upload the fourth picture from the fourth file 3. Post 4. Tag four friends

Wow! This is an old picture. This is Steve's mom, Steve, and me holding Joseph when he was like 7 months old. I loved what a chubby baby he was! He was so cute!
I tag Kara, Sarah, Crystal and Emily.

Huge Twilight News

I'm way excited about this!

See article below:

Twilight Sequelizes

Fri Nov 14, 10:17 am ET E! Online – Twilight Sequelizes(E! Online) Los Angeles (E! Online) – What fanggirls want, fanggirls get.

While there's still a week to go before Twilight opens in theaters, producer Summit Entertainment is already sinking its teeth into more installments of the vampire romance, acquiring the rights to the next three novels in Stephanie Meyer's series.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the studio has also secured the services of Twilight screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg to pen New Moon and Eclipse, the second and third installments of the would-be blockbuster franchise.

Further ensuring squeals from the masses: Lead bloodsucker Robert Pattinson is also on board for the first three films.

The principals have not yet signed for the fourth installment, Breaking Dawn (SPOILER ALERT—the one where regular teen Bella and her vampire love, Edward, finally tie the knot), but presumably that fact is still a significant number of years away from being a worry.

Twilight opens—as if you needed reminding—Nov. 21. (Check out the latest movie stills in our Twilight gallery.)

Wordless Wednesday - I Can't Get Enough of this Little Personality

Katie Kat

Just a cute little note about today..

Kathrynn meowed through the entire closing hymn of sacrament meeting today. I guess it's her way of singing. I thought it was absolutely hilarious and had a hard time holding my composure. :)

What We Did While We Were Offline

Last you all really heard from us was way back in July when we moved into our house. Soooo much has happened since then, so I'm going to give you the quickest version of it that I can.. :)

*Steve upgraded our electricity from 30 amps for our entire house to the normal amount for a house the size we live in, allowing me to use our dryer, among other things. I'm so grateful to be married to someone who knows how to do these kinds of things.

*Had A/C and a new furnace installed (our old furnace was from like 1953). Summer was hot and our house is all brick and basically turned into an oven. It was awful.

*Decorated our house. Through this learned that nails don't like plaster walls and Steve has a really good eye for drapes. :)

*Worked on the disaster that is our yard and planned our garden for the spring. There's still yet a lot of work to be done in this area.

*Put a kitty we rescued down. It was so so so sad. She was in a lot of pain though, and it was totally necessary. We had a little funeral for her in our backyard and she has a little grave where we plan on planting some roses in the spring.

*Steve discovered, through a close encounter (it jumped up on his leg) that we had a black widow problem in our garage. He has had a bit of arachnaphobia since then. We bombed the garage and thoroughly sprayed our house to kill the little buggers off.

*Reworked our front flower bed. I dug up a bunch of shrubs that just weren't working and planted a bunch of tulips and tiger lilies and we moved a pear tree that was there to our back yard.

*Started going to our new ward which is great and met some wonderful people there - we've made some great friends already.

*Discovered the wonder that is Kid to Kid. I'm in love with this store.

*Read Breaking Dawn in about three days. Got a lot of teasing for this one.

*Got the kids memberships to the Treehouse Museum. Coolest place ever! We go every week for Toddler Time.

*Reinstated my Gold's Gym membership and started going at 6 a.m. every morning. Check out the building it's in: Salomon Center.

*Joe started going to a preschool that the moms of 3 and 4 year olds in our ward put together and he LOVES it!

*Did the preschool at my house and had a headache that lasted several hours. :)

*Admitted Kathrynn into the hospital for an overnight stay due to a nasty stomach virus that left her badly dehydrated. Good news: she's all better and got her new favorite snuggly stuffed animal out of it. Bad news: severe separation anxiety. She was a little traumatized from the whole experience.

*Kathrynn had her speech explosion and started talking in sentences. It's seriously awesome that she's already able to communicate as much as she is.

*Kathrynn got all of her molars. Now THAT was fun.

*Went to a neighbor's birthday party for their son where there was only one other person who spoke English. :)

*Got a van. Mostly so I could have something to drive around during the day - but it will be so nice to have when we expand our family in the future.

*Got cable. Seriously, it was just so we could watch conference, but it's been nice to have. This is the first time we've had it in the almost 6 years of our marriage. We also got a DVR which I LOVE.

*Became addicted to The Biggest Loser.

*Lost 5 lbs and counting! :)

*Joe got a nasty ear infection which scared me a little more than normal due to the Kathrynn hospital thing.

*Joe has progressed with potty training but isn't all the way there yet. We've got #1 down, still working on #2.

*Got like 8 inches of snow in October.

*A couple of months after the initial bombing of the garage, etc., we found a black widow INSIDE our house. At that point I pretty much freaked out and said that we had to call an exterminator or move. We called the guy and haven't seen anything since.

*After 3-4 basement floods called Rotor Rooter and they pulled a 3 foot root out of our main line. Apparently we have a root problem there. He fixed it and put some root killer down there so we should be good for quite some time now.

*I turned 31. Not nearly as traumatizing as 30.

*Celebrated Halloween. Kathrynn was a darling little witch and Joe was a dinosaur. Pictures to come.. :)

*Went to the most insane trunk or treat ever at our Stake Center. There was a line around the side of the church. Not for the faint of heart.

I think that, for the most part covers it. :)

Glad to be back!

And... We're Back!

We decided to re-install our internet. We actually made it FOUR MONTHS with no connection! That's like living without electricity these days! We decided that it was time to rejoin normal society since we have both learned that we really dont need it. But, I have missed keeping up with all of my friends and filling you all in on the oh-so-interesting details of our life (there's been some pretty good stuff that's been missed on here).
I'm going to try to not be as frequent a blogger - not because I don't enjoy it, but because I have found so much more enjoyment in things that don't involve the computer. You know, clean house, happy kids, etc. :) But, I'll log on every so often to keep y'all up to date with our ever-constant adventures. :)

PS - it's cold and dark here. Sun's set by 5:30 and, well, I'm freezing my bum off. :)