Updatey

Wow! This has really been quite the bloggin' hiatus I've taken the past few months! It's amazing how much good weather deters me from blabbin'! :) So I'm just going to give you the basic rundown of the past little while. - With maybe a few pics added tomorrow. 

First off, I'm now officially in my LATE twenties! Scary, huh?? Just kidding. I had a WONDERFUL birthday last week! All my lovely flowers decided to pop up and bloom just for me and the weather was beautiful! 

Nels and I have been able to clean up our yard and get part of it ready for sod to be laid in the backyard. Our neighbor decided to finally put up the six foot wooden fence between our yards and we "HAD" :) to tear down the chain link. So sad, huh!? :) Therefore, we are finally going to get a couple of my dad's beautiful gates to contain our children! :) I'm excited. I've spent many an hour standing in front of my house staring at my garden and new fence, deciding on exactly what I want to do with it. I'm looking forward to lots of playing around in the yard this Spring and Summer!

Hooray for separation!!! I love it! I will love it more with a gate! :)

We got Nels' birthday hammock hung up in our backyard!!! Hooray! I'm --- Oops! I mean, WE are REALLY looking forward to getting good use out of it this summer!

Easter was wonderful! We made our way down to Utah to spend the weekend with my family and attend the blessing of my brother's beautiful baby girl. We stayed with said brother and his wife, Ben and Kelly, for the weekend and had such a wonderful time! I love them all so much and it was great to be with them! Ben and I got to go fish browsing one evening together and then the following Monday we went to the zoo with my sisters, Wendie, Melissa, and Kelly (yes, Kelly, I consider you my sister!) and their kids. The girls LOVE the zoo and love even more to spend time with their cousins. Elsie loved all the animals! Especially the monkeys - Hoo Hoo Ha Ha! (That's what she calls them!)

Easter is one of my favorite holidays. I love the joy and triumph - the rebirth and victory - that I feel that sweet morning. I don't really do the whole Easter Basket tradition - as I feel that I want the focus of Easter to be on the Savior - but I was hoping to have the dresses finished . . . . Alas, I did NOT finish the girls Easter dresses on time, and am still slowly working on them. I really hope to have them finished this week, as I have many other projects that I'd like to start on, but can't justify until I finish these beautiful dresses! Pictures are to be forthcoming!

For my birthday on Wednesday, I got many, many warm hippity happy birthday wishes and planned to spend the sunniness (yes. sunny-ness IS a word - as it didn't come up on spell check!) - okay, spend the sunniness doing two of my most favorite things; browsing Home Depot for paint and then meandering through the Nursery for flowers. 

What girl with a family history of skin cancer wouldn't want one of these!?

We made it out to Target to buy my desired floppy gardening hat before we got a call from Nels asking if I would mind making an impromptu trip down to Utah. Hmm? Eat Angel Food Cake with my family OR go to H.D. and the Nursery??? It was a hard choice, but we decided to rush home and get ready to go. Apparently Nels needed to head to Utah for work the next day. Down we went and one day turned into FOUR days! Darn me for learning how to stop overpacking!!! Two sets of clothes and a skimpy supply of diapers make it hard to stretch your stay!

Aside from the uncertainty of our plans from one day (or hour) to the next, we had a GREAT time spending time with my parents and siblings and even COUSINS! :) AND even though I had to skip my trip to the nursery, it turned out the my mom's house is a much more affordable nursery! :) She generously shared several of her overgrown perennials with me and I'm really looking forward to finding new homes for them around my yard!! Thank you MOM!!! You are so wonderful! Thank you Wendie, Genny, Melissa, Kelly, and Alyssa for entertaining me and my girls while we were "winging" it! I love you all so much! What a blessing to have such incredible sisters!!!

Nels was the unsung hero of the weekend, even though we didn't see too much of him! He spent Thursday afternoon with Elsie while I hung out with Wendie and Genny. - And then Friday he went down to Salt Lake to work little brains out. :) (Nels, you have little brains! LOL! That's funny!) I dropped him off at Metropolis (a great production company) downtown at 11 o'clock on Friday and he worked STRAIGHT until 3:30 the Saturday afternoon! After a 28 hour work day, he made it back to my parents' house to sleep for the next 17 hours! :) I love you, dear! Thank you for being the kind of person that is willing to do so much to provide for our family!!

Nels is calling me to play "Rock Band" with him - so I'll end this verbose post!

So easy to see why I first fell in love with Nels! Look how he ROCKS!!! :) When Nels and I were first dating (and various times since) he was in a rockin' band - playing the bass. I loved it and whiled away many an evening watching Nels in his cutoff Wranglers, black t-shirt, green Scout socks, and velcro shoes - with Mike blowing fire balls . . . man, those were the days!

Yep, she's adorable!

FFF Addendum

Here is my little toothless girl in all her glory! :) I think she's precious! 

She was so very brave about getting it pulled ---- well, mostly. She cried and cried about it every time I would mention it, but Monday night as we were brushing her teeth, decided to "help" her and make sure that it was extra clean. :) When it started bleeding, she freaked out a little. :) I asked her if she'd like me to just pull it out now and she said yes - so I did. I am actually proud of both of us! :)

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Another little fabulous thing is that Elsie has started making this fish face! It's so funny and so cute! I LOVE IT!

She has also started another little funny thing. If she is getting impatient about something, she starts counting! "Two, Fwee, Nine, Ten!" It must be something that she hears a lot! :)

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My sweet, sweet Lilie. She is such a good and happy girl! She is such a good friend to her sisters --- even though Elsie has been hitting her a lot lately! :( They seem to butt heads a lot, but she's very patient with her little sister. I love her so much!  

Don't you just love her pipe cleaner bracelet!? She's adorable!

Friday's Fabulous Five

1. Hazel lost her tooth! I'll post a picture later today, when she's home from Preschool, but she was so brave and looks so cute! I'm really proud of her!

2. I have run consistently for the past two weeks! Hooray for me! For the past 4 times, I've run 3+ miles --- well, that's technically not true --- I've gone 3+ miles . . . while stationary in my basement . . . on my treadmill. :) I've walked/run 3+ miles and the past 2 days, 2 miles of that has been running. . . . If that makes any sense. :) I'm proud of me for sticking with it. I've never really loved running, however, I've found that for me - I push myself harder when I'm running by myself with music. I don't usually like my music to be too loud. However, when I run I may be in jeopardy of permanently damaging my ears. :) I seem to do better zoning out everything else and pushing myself. When I run with someone else, I give up much easier. It's weird. And maybe as I get better at running, that won't be the case.  ---- Hmm. I'm kind of like that with lots of things in my life. I don't really like having other people OBSERVE me struggling with something. I can openly talk about things that I do or have struggled with, but I don't like people watching me go through the rigors of things that are genuinely hard for me. Hmm. I just noticed that. While it's not true for ALL things, I think it's true for a lot. 

3. Hazel watched Elsie for me while we were outside yesterday SO WELL! The other day I had asked her if she would keep an eye on Elsie for me while I was vacuuming out the van and they were all outside. Elsie is more of a wanderer than my other two are or ever were and I told Hazel that if she would just make sure that Elsie stayed in the yard, I'd get her a treat at the store. Two minutes later, I turned around to find Elsie nowhere in sight. She was in the neighbor's yard and Hazel was devastated that she didn't get to have a treat. Yesterday she did so good at helping that I couldn't help but dole out gushy praises on her. She followed her around for more than half an hour bring Elsie back into the yard every time she wandered. What a big girl! She's learning how to do so many big things. I love my Hazel so much!

4. Today is supposed to be sunny and I'm going to mow my lawn for the first time this year! There are mostly just a few spots where it's starting to get a bit scraggly, but it will look (and SMELL) so great. I'm happy!

5. Nels and I are going out to eat dinner - just the two of us! - on Saturday for my birthday! I'm excited -- as I can't even remember the last time that we went on an actual date without our children. I'm certainly not complaining, as I love to have them with us and I think it's fun to be all together, but it will be fun. What a great husband I have! He works so hard for us and gives so much. I couldn't ask for more than I've been given in my life. I have so much to be thankful for!

Growing up!

Hazel has a loose tooth!

How did this happen??? That my baby is going to lose a tooth?? She's not that big? Certainly not big enough to have some of those great, big, awkward-looking teeth in her little mouth! This is so strange! ~ Don't get me wrong, I'm totally excited for her, but sometimes time just goes by too fast, you know?

Also, how is it that I can forget all sorts of things from my childhood - Nels remembers things so well and often asks me questions that I simply have no answer for - but I can VIVIDLY remember the feeling of having a loose tooth. Funny.

FFF

1. I have NOTHING scheduled for today!! How lovely! I love not having anything pressing - just time to spend with my kiddos, work at my leisure, and play around with some of my projects. Now if I just get some easy crockpot dinner going, I really can just while away the day - waiting to Nels to come home.

2. So I did have ONE thing on my calendar for today which I didn't count as "pressing" because Nels was able to stay home with the other girls and it was so early. Elsie had her 18 month check up. We found that she is healthy (awesome) and very advanced in her verbal skills, but that she is truly an "Itty Bitty". She is FINALLY, at 18 months, TWENTY POUNDS!! Horray! She is in the 2nd percentile on her weight and the 18th for height. She's so tiny! I'm going to have to start feeding her anything that she will eat - sugar, fried foods, and straight cream! Ha! Just kidding, but I do need to try to cox her to eat more. (Wendie, how little was Kerri? I remember she was tiny, but how tiny?)

3. I finally got started on the girls Easter dresses last night! They are going to be seriously beautiful! I really wish I hadn't cut out the fabric over a year ago, as Hazel has grown quite a bit in the last year, but the bodice fits perfect right now - I just hope she doesn't have any major growth spurts in the next six months or so! -- I'll take pictures when I've got more completed.

4. Nels doesn't have to work late tonight! I love my hubby and I'm so excited when we get to spend time together as a family!

5. General Conference starts tomorrow and I'm excited! I love hearing our prophet and other leaders. I'm really looking forward to it and thinking of good ways to keep my kids involved. Any ideas that work for your families? (Thank you Becca, for the packet that you sent to me! Awesome!)

My own personal FEAR FACTORY

Do you ever have experiences that really push your bravery limits? I had one today.

I'm insecure about a lot of things - there are a lot of things that make me nervous. But usually I can fake it, ya know? Like I get really nervous meeting new people. It's really uncomfortable for me. However, I've learned to fake it. Like I'm the most confident person in the world. Like it doesn't phase me at all. I force myself to think rational thoughts, form coherent questions, smile, laugh, and talk. It's hard for me, but I can do it. There are lots of things in my life that are similar to this - things that I'm nervous about, weaknesses that I have.

But there are very few times in my life that I feel absolute FEAR. Things that can make my hands shake and my foot tap uncontrollably. Things that dramatically increase my blood pressure by initiating my fight or flight syndrome. Things that make me talk too loud and too much. (Funny enough as I read through this, if you leave out the fear part, caffeine - like those mega energy drinks - give me these EXACT same symptoms! That's weird.) So anyhow, today, I felt fear.

Since we now have insurance for the first time in 6 1/2 years of marriage, I've decided to get some of my "derma-logical blemishes" (otherwise known as moles) removed. I was so very graciously given these by my father - who inherited them from his mother - who died of melanoma at a tragically young age. Well, I was very brave a month ago when I went in and got two of them taken off. One on my back, one on my scalp. It was a very tramatic experience, but I survived. - Only to be told a week later, when the biopsy returned, that the doc hadn't removed all of the cells on one of them, and he would have to redo it with a larger incision. Lovely. So today was the day. It was terrible. It went well, but it was terrible. I DON'T LIKE PEOPLE CUTTING ON MY HEAD. I don't like feeling blood trickle through my hair. I don't like injecting lidocaine into my scalp. I don't like people having to cauterize blood vessels on my HEAD. 

So yeah. I don't really have a point to this post, other than to let you know that other than delivering Elsie when the epidural had entirely worn off, this experience is in the running for second place on own personal fear scale. Today I was brave. Today I mustered up all my courage, shaking hands, babbling mouth, increased heartbeat and all. I was brave. And I recognized that I don't like fear.